I died on a Tuesday, which wasn’t nearly as inconvenient as dying again on Thursday. The first death was clinical—heart stopped for six minutes during a valve replacement. But death, like most bureaucracies, has loopholes. The surgeons pulled me back and sent me home with blood thinners and instructions to “take […]
The Second Death of Wallace Porter Read More »
Limited Series Part 2 I’m gathering dust at my usual booth, taking a break from the midnight bazaar after reuniting the kid with his parents. I contemplate how long I can keep doing this—saving folks—as I chow down on a combo of onion rings and a soggy mushroom Swiss when a kid bolts
Limited Series Part 1 My stall at the midnight bazaar wasn’t hard to find. All you had to do was walk past countless other derelicts pawning family heirlooms or renting themselves out as a companion to talk to. To fuck. To play therapist. The smell of deep-fried illegal meat and contraband cigarette smoke
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Kaiel rocketed into space, his flight invisible in the night. Not quite invisible. A missile, silent in the thinning air, ricocheted off Kaiel’s ship and exploded in a blitz of hot metal. His spacecraft cartwheeled; time trickled to a stop, flattening his life-beat to a halt. His spaceship juddered,
Thirty-six hours into the malpractice review, they finally ask the question that matters: Would I have done anything differently? I stare at the MRI showing Sage Cohen’s glioblastoma, wrapped around her temporal lobe like a dark star collapsing. The imaging was clear, the path obvious. And still, she hemorrhaged on my table.
At the massive, open-air pulga, a man could get his car windows tinted, save his eternal soul, and lose it again—all in one place—while a soundtrack of Ranchero and reggaeton blared from every stall. Jared didn’t need snakeskin boots or chicharrones. But he’d pay anything to see his daughter again. A
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As soon as Carna steps into the lift, her pager notifies her of a job on the other end of the galaxy. The pay would cover her rent, but should she choose to accept the run, the cosmic bike courier would, as the ad promises, have to make it all the way across
A Galaxy Run in 30 Minutes or Less Read More »
By the dim light of a dying candle, Grandmother’s hunched back looms over your small, quivering body, fever high. She presses horn against stone—withered skin pulled taut over smooth bone. Smooth bone hard against jagged, carved rock, pour water, mix—the murky water is magic. When did her hands stop looking like
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I was five days overdue. “Go fetch the washing off the line,” Mom said, “let’s see if that gets things started.” So I grunted down over my belly, grabbed the laundry basket, and lumbered through the yard in bare feet. I glanced back. Mom was watching my slow progress from the back step,
With the summer solstice sun melting into the horizon, Ulrike hits the gas pedal and screeches out of Glendale along the I-5 to East Hollywood, where she parks in front of a Walgreens boasting a “now with extended hours” sign. With trembling…paws, she adjusts the rearview mirror to check her reflection. Hair—coarse and
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