Fiction

I had never been on TV before, and didn’t even pull a comb through my hair before I came out to face the cameras. As soon as the light came on I smiled, then begged the abductor—rapist, murderer—to turn himself in. My smile a gash across my face, I pleaded with anyone who might have…

In Hellensburgh there was a slaughterhouse and a bank. The post office closed at noon. The high school had five teachers and my uncle, a teacher, was the football club coach. Many of the schoolboys, thick-legged and silent, took up jobs in the slaughterhouse when they turned fifteen. The money was good. The boys would…

The hotel is ideally placed for business and pleasure, with the turnpike close at hand. An underpass gives access to a range of outlets. Across the fields is the faculty, bringing visitors from around the world. All find a welcome at The Pines. Mrs. Parfitt and I pride ourselves on it. I was born into…

South of Van, Kamal switches off the headlights. It’s superstition more than anything, but it makes me uneasy. “Are there checkpoints this far north?” I ask. He shrugs. “Possibly.” It’s supposed to be ten hours to Nusaybin, our destination, although that’s in a bus, by day. Not by night, without headlights, on our way to…

Sharon sells sex toys by the seashore. She drives her red convertible down the streets of Delray Beach, parks in front of the lemony condo off Ocean Boulevard. The lot is already full of convertibles, many with vanity plates: 2hot4U, hotMama2, and variations thereof. Inside, the snowbird ladies welcome her, their hair frosted and tufted,…

If on a January day you should get in your car and start driving on the steep Chalus road toward the sea, you will at last come upon a place near the dome formations where you’ll see a stone, a smallish slab of rock with the flat, written part facing you: “Mani, Taraneh, may your…

It was barely daylight when she left him on the porch. Hearing her stir, he’d gotten up, followed her around the house, his hair a mess, his eyes sunken, sleep-deprived. “Mama,” he said to her, a thing she relished, because up until Charles went to prison, he never called her this. “What’s that?” she said….

for Dr. NCB I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. —from “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Langston Hughes She took her time, walking like a fawn, careful not to make a twig snap. It was getting dark, but she could still see plenty. The voice grew and rose, and was the color of mint, like what…

The swimming pool was empty because there was a crack in its side that needed to be patched, so Emma used it as a hideout when she wanted to get high. Bundled up in her purple down parka and a pair of silver Uggs, she would squat on the cement near a moldy accumulation of…