I saw her as soon as I materialized in Golden Gate Park. She lounged on a blanket, waiting for the Jefferson Airplane concert. The crown of dandelions adorning her hair seemed familiar somehow. She turned toward me, perhaps sensing my stare—and I swayed on my feet, knocked dizzy by a rush of déjà […]
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When the monsoon failed to arrive that year, the people of Ghoshpara began to mutter beneath their breath that someone had stolen the clouds. The ponds cracked into mirror-shards, the frogs turned mute, and the banana leaves drooped like weary hands. Only one person seemed untouched by the heat: little Mita, who walked
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There once was a boy who wished he had a brother, for he was lonely, his mom always at work or in bed or in court fighting his father, who’d gone to live with another family. The boy had seen magic in movies and figured he could do something about his loneliness. So
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
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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
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