These are the things Walt will eat: Mondays: Box macaroni and cheese, the macaroni shaped like Pac-Man and ghosts. Tuesdays: Personal-size frozen pizza. Mel cuts a thin wedge from the pizza and arranges the pepperoni so that it looks like an eye. Wednesdays: Frozen burritos. Mel cuts a circle out of a slice of orange cheese, cuts a wedge…
Mana was happy that her Airbnb listing got booked the day she put it up. His name was Alex. He hadn’t asked any questions prior to booking, even about the location or amenities. It was surprising, given the many inquisitive guests she’d had in the past at her old apartment. Perhaps she’d done a better job with the…
When Ma starts in on me again, she’s splashing gas station cabernet into an old, cracked coffee mug, flipping the bottle top-down and filling it to the lip. The springs from the pullout couch dig into my ass, and I can’t get comfortable. Ma grabs the remote and hits mute. A guy on the tube sobs silently, his head…
Here’s how it happened: They were all packed tight inside a tiny apartment. Lena, Milo, August and the others, all the girls in children’s shirts and all the guys in pants four sizes too big. They drank rum and Cokes first, sipping out of mugs, spilling brown liquid on the rug, laughing it up, “ha, ha.” Milo brought coke,…
by Alison Bullock When the silver-embossed envelope arrives in the mail, Eleanor’s husband Gerald is practically giddy. It’s from the chief of thoracic surgery over at the hospital where he works as a cardiologist. An invitation to a house-warming party. “This is it,” Gerald says, rising up on his toes. “It’s happening.” The invitation isn’t personal—everyone in the department…
You’re growing your first child inside; it’s a girl, and your father is visiting for Thanksgiving. He wears a chocolate-brown ascot with a white shirt under a multicolored Pucci jacket. You wonder when he began wearing ascots, and you curse under your breath because you’ve already purchased his Christmas gifts, which include an insanely-expensive silk tie you took…
We painted little red circles for the ladybugs strewn across the windowsill legs tucked up into their dry bellies for the baby ladybugs, small specks of red kids on the playground smashed between rocks We painted round black spots for the ladybugs grandma pinched between her cracked fingers and the ladybugs she flicked from the raspberries into…
Put a fan on it, because that’s how we parch what spills here, caged metal blades carving the air, blowing loose scraps into crumb-lined corners. A recipe for disaster is what we call this place, built on fried zucchini and foot-size fish sandwiches, its brown kitchen tiles iced tea-slick. Septuagenarian, Soup Bone moves bear-hunched and bowlegged, surveying his…
SPACE (Mistakenly untethered at the of rear of the craft, she leaned away to view the earth.) The slightest turn. An unintended push and suddenly you are out of touch out …
I hold a slice of onion to the only window in this reduced world. The rainbow opposite acts as a reminder this isn’t a prison. Watch the slice turn translucent, transform into an opalescent sphere. Light pollution has been diminished by people settling into more natural rhythms. I crack the window open for the first time and steal…