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Fiction

Fiction

A Guide for Your Journey to the Green Hills

It’s a little difficult for me to think about the initial process of this piece because I’ve continued to think about it quite a lot since initially writing it, to the point where it’s now the kernel of a someday novel project about occupation by a victorious fairyland.

Fiction

Moon Rabbit Song

The skies are a pitch-black void—cold, empty, unforgiving. Far from home, the rivers of heaven have run dry, the starlight scarce in this part of Father’s empire. Passing comets die out with a pathetic fizzle, and the migrating flocks of magpies care not to bridge the gap between star-crossed lovers.

Fiction

She Sheds Her Skin

Cora has left her skin lying out again. It’s the first thing I see when come in. Open the door, hang up my coat, kick off my heels, turn on the lamp, and there it is, slouched in the mid-century chair by the ratty sofa. Her empty skin, deflated, black sockets staring at me.

Fiction

NotRob

When my daughter was a newborn, I found I only had the attention span to write micro and flash; I wrote a lot of it. I was also sleeping very little at night and crashed most afternoons, which for me is when the weirdest dreams happen. “NotRob” was one of them.

Fiction

Perfect Water

Something tells you this two-pump station isn’t a contactless kind of place. Google Maps gave up the ghost several miles ago. You go inside and pay in cash. Diolch, you add, your one word of Welsh; the cashier replies with something you don’t follow.

Fiction

Little Horn

This whole business, it all started right about when I burned my church down. Not one I went to, or ministered at—I mean the one built around me, raised by my very own personal worshippers, so they could do their sacrificial reverence to me in private.

Fiction

House of the Hidden Moon

My mother sits at the kitchen table in the moonlight, gazing at her folded hands. “Has your father returned with Lilah?” “You know he hasn’t.” The tremor she had before she died is gone. A tube runs from the oxygen unit, through her laced fingers, and up into her nostrils.

Fiction

What Happened to the Crooners

On an unmarked road somewhere in the Appalachians, a midnight blue Cadillac rolled to a stop, gravel popping under tires, headlights peering out into the discord of dusk. Outside the car, in the shadowy thicket, cicadas and crickets hollered.

Fiction

Queen of the Rodeo

We hear you laughing as you speed by on the interstate. In spite of what you might think of us, we are a proud town. We don’t need your understanding. We don’t explain. You couldn’t handle the answers.

Fiction

Painted Surfaces

This is a retelling of a Chinese folktale that I couldn’t get out of my head. It’s been through a lot of revisions. The two things that helped it come into its final form were cutting half the word count, and finding a voice for the main character that suggests that the horror is not only in what is happening, but those who might be complicit in the act.

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