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I was 19 when I met Tommy. A day and a bit into a two-day Greyhound trip from bumfuck, Nevada to Saint Paul, Minnesota. Going to meet some trick from the internet. Thought it was true love. Funky and itching for a smoke when we pulled into a truck stop in a one-road Nebraska town […]
Karin Ljusmåne had a dollhouse, but it was an afterthought, not the nursery centerpiece of my previous charges. What she really had was a doll forest. The acres of tiny wooden trees dominated her nursery, filling the space where ordinary children rode rocking horses and played blind-man’s-buff. It was remarkably like the forest where I […]
All the students at Queen Mary Catholic High School knew about Principal Vargas’ death before the first bell. To Rayven James, it was welcome news. The entire student body swarmed through the hallways like a many-headed ocean, with straight brown, blond and black hair coloring the seas. An occasional pop of red floated past like […]
Content note: child endangerment and death 1. When the children are ready, they go in the simulator. There are only ten children left by now, so there’s plenty of scheduling time to go around. They all jump the low bar of the necessary diagnostics: medical, psychological, emotional, physical. If they break in there, the […]
Do you remember the war? No, of course not. You were too small, a solemn-eyed toddler in Má’s arms. You were born in the year of the rat, a lucky, ambitious year. I was two years older, year of the dog, loyal to the end. You were little souris, little Em, and I was your […]
“Well of course we fought it,” Hunter said, raising his voice to be heard in the crowded restaurant patio. “Who the hell wants their kid staring off into space seeing God-knows-what all the time, instead of learning how to live in the real world?” “Same way our parents fought like hell to limit our tablet […]
From behind the desk-cum-checkout counter, Lucy said, “I’m sure you’ll find some good pieces. The family was super eager to clear the estate or I wouldn’t have been able to snatch the whole lot, and I’ll give you a deal, because obviously I overshot.” Hangers scraped on metal as Katrin sifted through the items on […]
Content Note: Suicide Blue was her favorite color. He touched the glass case one last time before returning to the desk, but his handprint lingered on, an ethereal smudge above the backlit, cerulean shadow of her face. No matter how often he tried to write their story, he couldn’t shake free of the lies […]
Juana thought this was bullshit. She had found the broken sailboat in the south wind and tried to pilot it to Hispaniola, but it wouldn’t go in the right direction. You’d think flying would be the hard part, but no, it was steering. And you’d think witches would be born knowing how to sail boats […]
Content Note: self-harm and suicide The first time Rang died, it stopped a typhoon. The typhoon raged at the entire Orphan Cousin enclave. Torrents rolled in for hours, swallowing the harbor in foam and brine, dashing fishing trawlers against the shore. Storage houses were dragged into the surf whole, returning split marlins and salted […]
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