(Content note: sexual assault.) When she was a girl, Vasilisa wanted to be a sniper. She’d grown up listening to tales of the valiant Stalingrad sharpshooters who had bolstered the city’s resistance to the German invasion in the Second World War. She enlisted in the army as soon as she was old enough, and […]
(Content note: sexual coercion/assault and suicidal ideation.) Before I was a sycamore I was a woman, and before I was a woman I was a girl, and before I was a girl I was a wet seed wild in the hot-pulp belly of my mother. I remember it: a pulsing blackness, veins unfurling in […]
Restless and troubled by salt-dreams, Dion was up before dawn. The night workers in the dryhouse sang work songs. Dion yoked her buckets across her shoulders and waded out into the sea, the face of the waters still black and littered with reflected stars. Red bands across the eastern sky shot through heavy clouds that […]
The seat beneath her was glossy plastic and not interested in prolonging their acquaintance. Shifting from thigh to thigh, Julia Popova flipped through newspapers in search of the logo and slogans for bourbon that she had labored over for weeks. New York Times, March 3, 2005—ESCAPED CARRIAGE HORSE. Reports to the Parks Department of a […]
Fifteen-year-old Miles Blackwell slapped the mosquito that landed on his neck, squashing it against his skin before it could bite him. So much for the expensive, mail-order “blessed” bug spray that his mother insisted he use. He was starting to wonder if the Lord really had favorite brands. He needs to know, Miles repeated in […]
(Content note for sexual assault.) We all make mistakes. As I sit on the floor of my bedroom, surrounded by the journals I kept in high school and in my twenties, and fill out the doctor’s form, I tally mistakes in the corner of the paper. Before marriage, before Dover’s and my quiet nights trading words […]
(Content note for incest and child death.) Well, Your Honours, it is true that I killed your child king, indeed it is true. You asked me how I came to know your tongue, before you put me in this cell. You broke my twig fingers one by one and asked me what I am, and what […]
When Niovi tried to smuggle her mother’s ghost into the new country, she found herself being passed from one security officer to another, detailing her mother’s place and date of death over and over again. “Are you carrying a ghost with you, ma’am?” asked the woman in the security vest. Her nametag read Stella. Her […]
When I leave the kill floor, my legs are wasted. I shuffle to the women’s locker room. I can’t stand anymore, but I know if I sit, I’ll never get back up. At least, not for another hour. I prop myself up on my open locker. My hands are shaking, too. My fingertips are blue, […]
My labor pangs are mild at first. They’re intense, sure, but it’s mostly warmth and pressure like my abdomen is hugging itself. I’ve got time. Hours maybe, before I have to flee the enclave and get myself to the birthing hideout. In the meantime, I’m in our makeshift infirmary, trying to get water past old […]