I nestle the video camera on its makeshift tripod, carefully centering my daughter’s image. She tucks her hair behind her ear and gives a strained smile. She is sixteen, and that hair is long and golden–kissed light brown and straight; she has the gangly grace only teenagers have, that sleek gazelle form. She is wearing khaki shorts and a striped tank top, and the bite mark on her arm is already putrefying.
Read MoreBecca at the End of the World
Saskia leaned into the darkness above the stage, only vaguely aware of the wood rail against her hips as she retied the left headstring on her marionette. On the stage below, the Snow Queen’s head eased into balance.
Read MoreBody LanguageOnce far ago and long away, in a sleepy little village on the edge of nowhere, a small town turned commuter-zone city-suburb, miners’ houses swallowed into Seventies schemes of pebbledash matchboxes, Lego blocks of buildings nestled soulless on winding roads all lined with parking bays and patches of grass trimmed lobotomy neat…
Read MoreThe Boy Who Loved DeathMike was there when Pavi’s kidneys failed. He was there when her liver, swollen and scarred, shut down. And her heart. He floated in her thickening, clotting blood, pressing all the conscious focus he could fit into the nanites permeating her body, killing her.
Read MoreTurning the Whisper
Athéne — the Athéne who was never mine — used to say that I was always slow to catch on. Even if it wasn’t true to begin with, it’s become true, and so I guess it makes sense that I didn’t understand how serious the tether break was until the consequence ran smack into me. I doubt she’d appreciate the irony.
Read MoreSomeone Like YouIt didn’t take with me, the world and its rules, the things it expected of me. In the end, that’s the only reason why I find myself still here after all these countless years, and still I refuse to leave the scene. If you drop a beat, I’m on it. If I hear the slightest scratch, I’m ready to spin.
Read MoreSister Twelve: Confessions of a Party MonsterJacob stared at the pyramid he had not built.
Read MoreA Matter of ShapespaceTeri Lewis was obsessing about her sister’s bad marriage and the president’s latest compromise, so she barely listened to Flo’s improvised song about pandas and dandelions, coming from the stroller in front of her.
Read MoreVictimless CrimesThey left Abal in a hurry, after Ozma’s mother killed the constable. It was a shame, too, because business had been good. Ozma’s mother had invitations almost every night to one party or another in the finest homes of Abal.
Read MoreThe Constable of Abal