Alicia climbed the dirty cement steps from the platform to the train station’s street level and walked out into a driving rain. Il pleut des cords, the French would say, it’s raining ropes, and it did look that way, long strands of rain that seemed to hang mid-air before splintering onto the pavement. It was one of a handful of… Read more →
When the woman’s voice comes over the intercom, the students are taking a test. This is a lockdown drill, the voice says. Behave as if there is an active shooter in the halls. Do not leave the classroom until you are released. The woman sounds bored. Maybe it’s better that way, you think. An emotion would frighten the kids. The… Read more →
In my junior year of college, I took a course titled “Modern Spanish Survey” to satisfy my Spanish major requirements. That semester we had a student from Russia named Yaroslav. During introductions on the first day of class, he said he came to the States when he was fourteen and was a third-year PhD student in Physics. When asked about… Read more →
Honesty, integrity, virtue; what you advocate for on your Youtube channel and Patreon lectures, exposing the meat industry’s lies and its contribution to illness, disease, and destruction in the Western world; activist-inspired videos, like PETA’s, showing maimed animals in factory farms, bred only for their profit in death, which non-vegans who are either stupid or psychotic call meals instead of… Read more →
1. Not a honeymoon, but an early marriage trip and they are standing by the edge of Niagara Falls. That spot where the river ends and hurls itself into mist and spin. She is gripped by the dark shelf underneath the inches of water and how inviting it looks. If she were anything but human, maybe. If she were a… Read more →
12 PM Ridwan is thinking about the news this morning; they gave the guy some 99 years. He is already 24. If he dies in jail after 50 years, do they keep his body there for another 25? He pumps once, twice. Something weird with the brakes. That other driver, not Pakistani, but Latino, maybe from one of those… Read more →
The whole family was allergic. Bill was allergic to Penicillin and had ballooned up and changed colors after he’d had a shot for a sinus infection. He looked like Violet on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory who’d swelled from chewing gum. Fortunately, the clinic’s nurse had given him a shot with an EpiPen. Bill’s… Read more →
Gjirokaster, Albania October 1908 In the mountains of Gjirokaster, the Fati hold the world like little snow globes in their hands, doling out curses and blessings, newborn by newborn, striking balance in the universe. Sometimes they shapeshift into snakes, sometimes into birds. Other times, they roam freely as beautiful women until their time comes to shadow a human –… Read more →
It was the second time it happened. You were rearranging your wardrobe. You had taken all the sarees out and piled them up before cleaning out the bottom of the shelf. You were deciding which saree to keep on top, the light-yellow one with small, embroidered leaves, or, the dark-brown one with white tassels when you remembered you wore a… Read more →
Andy was ten years old the first time he heard the trees ablaze with cicadas. He thought it was the trees themselves burning with invisible flames. He ran inside his family’s double-wide and told his father to get some water to put out the fire in the maple he liked to climb. His father, slumped in the recliner watching a… Read more →