Magic
“I’ll cut you in half,” Todd said. “It’ll be fun.” Mariel doubted that. She doubted nearly everything these days. Which could get you into trouble. Big trouble. The world was run on beliefs. Not surface beliefs, like jumping off a cliff and thinking you can fly, but underneath beliefs. The stuff we believe despite everything we tell ourselves. Todd had the saw in his hand, and he was looking greedy. He needed miracles — needed to swallow them like candy. He’d always been like that. A miracle-eater. “Lie down on the table,” Todd said,...
Read MoreChum
Front lawns. Covered in vines. Out-of-control plants. Vegetables. Drip irrigation. Rain barrels made out of oil drums. Hoses running every which way. A model of self-sufficiency, you think. Might even believe you stumbled into paradise. But then you smell the pesticides. Artificial and caustic in your throat. Yellow-white streaks. Chemicals mixed with pollen. Washing out into the street. You get your personal ration, but everything else goes to the food bank. Collection trucks rumble down the street three times a day. You load your veggies into the recycle bin. Sorted by family: legumes,...
Read MoreThe Debt Breakers
Time: 1745 Date: June 8, 2053 Client: Natalia Suzanna Karlovskaya; (common: Charlie) Age: 31.3 Occupation: construction support; player Status: 000 Client responds to terminal bell promptly, shuts off machine, removes gloves, walks toward meeting area, produces cigarette, stops to light. Client sits on stack of cement sacks, smokes. Behavior consistent with history: client will appear at meeting approximately 1.4 minutes late; no penalty; Team Player Rating (TPR) remains low: 36.3. Client stands, crushes cigarette, proceeds toward “locker room” environment, arrives at...
Read MoreThe Banished
“Did you know that the World Before was much different?” Luke’s words startled Eve. They were walking along the grassy bank of Placid Lake in the cool, fragrant evening. She stared up at her friend in shock. No one ever spoke of such things. “What do you mean?” He looked around as if afraid someone might overhear. Several other New Eden Citizens, garbed in colorful tunics, were also out strolling, enjoying the sunset and watching the stars come out before the sky clouded, issuing the start of the scheduled nightly rains. A group of children, their laughter piercing the air,...
Read MoreSwamp
I’m out in the skiff, catching mullets for me Mam and Pap, when that boat like a raft sneaks onto me, but I’m not seeing it because just then the sun comes up, making all that water gold, and on all the islands, those palms and live oaks, they shine like green fire. It’s behind the islands, that boat. And I’m not hearing its Evinrude. Sister egret flaps over, looking in me eye, and pelicans glide in a line, wingtips just riffling that golden water, and there’s brother dolphin’s fin knifing, after those mullets, too, making them jump, so they leave...
Read MoreThe Quiet Catharsis of Igor Isaenko
The following pages were found in a Children’s Hospital in Mazyr, Belarus, by an American journalism student during the filming of a documentary. I Dear Reader, whom I do not know, who may never be, I write not for you but for me. I write because I can’t sleep. I write because Polina is dead. Currently, I’m drunk from three capfuls of vodka on a three-day empty stomach. I have Nurse Natalya to thank for this. She is the only one who knows how destroyed I am. She is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a mother, and I know she thinks of me as a son. Like any good mother,...
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