Two in the morning. The air was luminous, chalky, bloated with humidity. The smoke detector was a broken stoplight, stuck on green all night. Exhausted, jet lagged, eyeing the light, I thought of my ninety-eight-year-old grandmother Ida.
Continue reading “Super Moon in Rome by David Levine”
“Not trying to be nosy, Wilton, but why the latex gloves?”
Wilton, armed with a rational explanation, chuckles. “Well, Mr. Simms, I contracted a rash working in the flower garden, and my hands are slathered in oint—”
Continue reading “Scales by David Henson”
I stopped drinking after my younger brother Cody chose assisted death. He was paralyzed from the neck down and never able to get high again because of it. That gave him courage.
Continue reading “When I Almost Became a Monk by Harrison Kim”
In the summer of 1997, when most men of his age were discovering the quiet dignity of cholesterol, Gopal Banerjee decided to make a perfume that would outlive death itself. Not metaphorically, he meant it quite literally. “Eternity,” he called it, though Calvin Klein had already used the name. Gopal didn’t mind; he believed trademarks were for those who lacked vision.
Continue reading “The Scent of Eternity by Susmita Mukherjee”
The last time we stayed at Popo’s house, I was five years old, still in the cradle of memory when truth and story become mixed up in an inseparable mosaic. It’s hard to say what I remember and what has been spun to me as a family tale, more real than my own hazy recollection. Maybe if I had been older I would have more to tell. Or maybe it would be all the more clear how much of Popo’s life had slipped through the cracks of my young, distracted mind.
Continue reading “Fisheye by Jade Lacy”
It’s like sitting in a cozy lamplit living room. A couch. A loveseat. Two cushioned chairs facing a mounted screen. Instead of a coffee table, though, a desk stands in the center, and instead of our favorite sitcom, we scroll through an electronic contract.
Funeral Agreement with Authorization to Prepare a Decedent for Burial
Continue reading “The Cost of Dying by Kayla Cain”
Today we celebrate Bella. Our beautiful, breathtaking, beloved, buried Bella. Our connection was less affection than ancestry, the sort of intimacy that shared blood makes inevitable.
Born less than two months apart, we were always together. Twins they called us, until our features grew too distinguishable to sustain the lie. I was small and sturdy, my skin the deep tan that made Nai Nai click her tongue and mutter about rice pickers and fieldwork. Bella possessed that particular alchemy of mixed blood: jade eyes set in porcelain skin, her father’s Scandinavian height stretched over her mother’s delicate Chinese bones, creating something that demanded worship.
Continue reading “Riptide by Manoela Torres”
I don’t know why she says what she says but I know she’s crazy and that’s why she keeps a locked chain across the refrigerator door. I pick the lock, same trick every morning. Grab butter. Eggs. Spinach. Tomatoes. Whip up the ingredients. Fry the oozing mess in a pan. Slap the omelet on a plastic plate. The kind of dish that won’t shatter when Mother slams it against the kitchen floor, when her blurred eyes widen at the biting rats that make her panic and scream and clamp down tighter to save the pieces of her scattered life.
Continue reading “Once Bitten by Renee Coloman”
No one grows up wanting to build coffins. When she was little, Veralai wanted to be a mage, or as she said as a toddler “make life sparkle.” She was the daughter of a woodcarver, who sometimes helped the local undertaker carve his coffins. When her father’s hands started to quiver, Veralai took his place. Even though it was unintended, Vera fell in love with death. Over time, she became the Coffin Maker of Cortana, renowned for using her crystal ball to peer into the memories of the deceased and create their perfect coffin.
Continue reading “The Coffin Maker of Cortana by Kate O’Sullivan”
Content that some readers may find upsetting – refer to the tags on the bottom of the page
Small towns are quiet places at night, especially the town of Hush. That’s what made it the ideal place for eight-year-old Sammy Keen to live in. The skinny boy with piercing dark eyes, a towering forehead, and large, floppy ears looked forward to bedtime every night, unlike his friends at school, who cherished the day and its fun activities under the bright sun. Changing into his pajamas, he’d jump into bed and turn off the lights. A smile would form on his face as he gazed at the open window and began to listen to the sounds outside, for Sammy was a gifted child with a wholly unique talent and the intelligence to utilize it.
Continue reading “Night Sounds by Tom Koperwas”
literally stories 