By Marisa Silver They were going to boil Dorothy’s blood. Take it out, heat it, put it back in. The cancer would be gone. Well, that wasn’t exactly it. The treatment had a more formal-sounding name, thermosomethingorother, a word that was both trustworthy (because you recognized the prefix) and lofty, so that you didn’t really [...]
By Helen Simpson “Gardening!” the girl said, and tilted back in her chair the way she knew would get a reaction. “It’s like knitting, isn’t it.” “Stop that, Lara,” her mother said. “You’ll break the chair.” “A sign of middle age,” Lara continued. “Old age. It’s what old people do when there’s nothing left in [...]
Although Kit and Rafe had met in the peace movement, marching, organizing, making no-nukes signs, now they wanted to kill each other. They had become, also, a little pro-nuke. Married for two decades of precious, precious life, she and Rafe seemed currently to be partners only in anger and dislike, their old, lusty love mutated [...]
By Carl Deuker Alec’s grandpa proves to be his best friend. But what happens when a best friend gets hurt and everything turns hopeless? Kids at school think I’m a nerd. That’s because I don’t like basketball or football, but I do like chess and math. At home it’s just about the same, though nobody [...]
In an ideal world, we would have been orphans. We felt like orphans and we felt deserving of the pity that orphans get, but, embarrassingly enough, we had parents. I even had two. They would never have let me go, so I didn’t say goodbye; I packed a little bag and left a note. On [...]
When I went up to check my traps, I saw that the porch lights at the lady’s place were still on, even though it was morning. “That’s an atrocious waste of power,” my dad said when I told him. His breath huffed in the air like he was smoking a cigar. The rabbit carcasses steamed [...]
Jack Dunhill, a.k.a. Bone, a.k.a. the Bear, a.k.a. Stan Newhope, a.k.a. Winston Leonard, a.k.a. Michigan Pete, a.k.a. Bill Dempsey, a.k.a. Shank, said, Not those waves but that little pucker on the surface out there is where the Cleveland water supply is drawn in, right there, and if you were to dump enough poison on that [...]
By Terry Bisson Look what I found in the driveway,” said Billy’s father. He held up a little rocket ship. “I almost ran over it. Does it belong to anyone here?” “No, sir,” said Billy. “We have a problem then,” said Billy’s father. “It must be a spaceship from another planet.” “Is there anyone inside?” [...]
Like mother, like daughter? It’s supposed to be autumn, THE TIME OF YEAR WHEN THE CLOUDS ARE HIGH IN THE SKY AND THE AIR IS FRESH. THAT’S HOW AUTUMN WAS WHEN I WAS LITTLE. BACK THEN, WE LIVED HOURS FROM THE CITY CENTER ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF BEIJING. TODAY, WE LIVE IN 1508B, 15 FLOORS [...]