Topic
fiction
A collection of 16 issues
ALLOCATION
Those who live out of suitcases learn to spend their evenings in bars. An endless tunnel of concourses, fuselages, trams, and front desks creates a dissociative environment where the realm of dreams provides more sure footing than any permanent address. There is no salvation from this state of mind in
A DIABOLICAL INSTRUMENT
It emerges from the Pacific Ocean as a direct jut of rock from the planet's hot mantle, tempered in cool seawater, then thrust towards heaven like a crude dagger. The atmosphere has answered its challenge in kind with never-ending antarctic winds, weathering its edge down to mossy stone.
A GOOD LUCK CHARM
She bounded back into the living room, her curls bouncing along the way. “Okay, so. This is one of my personal treasures. I don’t talk about this much, but I think you’ll understand why when you see it.”
She was cradling something swaddled in a blue blanket patterned
THE TOMB OF THE LAST PRESIDENT
THE DEVIL AND PAUL BUNYAN
One evening, Paul Bunyan was crossing south into Texas from the Oklahoma panhandle, when Elkanah Halfwright and his men rode out to meet him, clad in blue-painted leathers to warn the giant of their severity. To his followers, Halfwright was a prophet who’d been ordained by a Wandering Bishop
DOWNWARD SPIRAL
“I mean, I think I’m remembering why I shouldn’t be dating right now.” Her fork had run out of bucatini to coil around itself. “I think Suzie was right, though, we should talk about these things. And your story about the ball pit, well. It rhymes with what
LIVING LANDSLIDES
According to legends written down in Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, the slide-rock bolter is a species of alpine whale that anchors itself high in the Rocky Mountains by its tail flukes, only to luge down the slope with an open maw, consuming everything in the path of the landslide
ON MOUNT CHIXCULUB AND MARS MINOR
A WELL-PRESERVED SECRET
The vegetable lamb of Tartary did not bleat when bound by its hind legs, nor when verdant blood spilled from its neck into wineskins and jars. More fruit than beast, its flesh, ground with peppercorn and mandrake root, was stuffed into casings of dried artichoke intestine. From there, it was