They were waiting for Haji on the platform. He squinted at them through the window grime. They were the only whites waiting for the train. The woman’s golden hair spilled [...]
Horror
Ruin
The ruin has history. No, histories. A Roman Villa cannibalized by the Britons; a Saxon Castle besieged by the Normans; a Catholic Monastery sacked on Henry VIII’s order.
In the present, [...]
Into the Cut
Why, with everything prime, would I answer the goddamn phone? In the Ten it’s just me and my restaurant. A narrow world of one-way streets and alleyways, black hot concrete and steel. Not much room for the natural things. Hell, there’s barely air that’s fit to breathe. Roses live in tacky plastic pots, vegetables come wrapped in neon gumbands stamped with smiling company mascots. But I like…
Ptomaine
I.
Miss Covington is dead before Frederick finds me.
Despite the damages, she is still attractive. A swathe of unbound hair curls across the snow. Her cheeks aren’t so round and fleshy [...]
Touched
I woke to the sound of frightened children. The wind swung in through the broken windows of the wrecked bus and curled around us, stealing in under our clothes. It [...]
Der Führer’s Bunker
The Soviet artillery is a steady heartbeat above our heads now. Reminds me of a child stomping about the house inside his daddy’s oversized boots, moving from room to room. Footsteps instead of detonations. I rather like the image. So do a few others in here with me. It lessens the fear. And down in our hole, there’s a lot to fear these days…
Viy
An ogre’s worth five minutes. Demons are ten. Double that if you’re working with two people; triple it for three. Multiply it by six if you want a horde. Increase [...]
Pullen & Bumber’s Catalogue of Particulars
As we at Pullen & Bumber are familiar with your particular proclivities, we hope to interest you in a series of items that have just come into our possession. They were delivered to the auction house mere days ago, and I assure you that no other customers yet know…
Poor Charlie Marks
“Piss off, Gillespie. I mean it.” Captain MacManus clutched the banister of the third floor landing, kicking the apartment door closed behind him. He swallowed hard as the faded, grime-crusted walls of the ancient tenement swayed before him. He took a deep breath, grimacing as…
The Boy Band
You have to understand: I’m putty in the hands of sad Asian men. Ever since I saw Jet Li’s wife get killed in “The One,” I’ve been the world’s biggest [...]
Pandora’s Blog
November 25
I got a bio internship at Portland State University starting next quarter, working for Professor H. He has a USDA grant for “Colony Collapse Disorder of the Western Honeybee,” [...]
Scavenger
If you go back to the same pet store every week, month after month, to buy a single goldfish, the clerks will start to get suspicious. They will think that [...]
Walking Point
Three months after I stepped on the land mine, I saw my dead son. He was slim and dark-haired, serious-faced as only a twenty-year-old can be. Without a word, he stepped into my Rambam hospital room, lifted my truncated body into a wheelchair, and pushed me down to the sea…
The Urban Parasite
My father, a compulsive liar, once told me that a person dies every time a leaf falls from a tree. If you catch a leaf before it touches the ground, you save a person’s soul. It’s early September in Chicago, and I’ve already let thousands of souls perish. I walk to work, from one graffiti-stained side of Wrigleyville to the other. The sidewalks, congested with foot traffic an hour before, are now clear. The only people I encounter are…