My mother has a lot of questions ( Read more... )

Wow, is my first thought, it's so light.

The next is, there's no way this is going to fit.The weirdest thing about what's happening is that it's happening. It's actually happening. The sudden reality of it, the physicality, is almost too much for me to handle. The dressing room is larger than I'd imagined, and more brightly-lit. My face is ( Read more... )

Temping feels right. Not good right, but appropriate. Like: it is right for a leaf to be attached to the branch of a tree, fluttering in the breeze and soaking in sunlight. But it is also right for a leaf to be stuck in a storm drain ( Read more... )

It's a rainy midday and Matthew sits in his car in an empty parking lot, reading old journal entries on his phone.

"I was such a petulant, entitled shit," he says.

"Mmm," says Counterpoint, "You've gotten a little better."

The past is a numb limb, attached but alien and remote. Matthew prods it and feels nothing. He considers amputation.

Matthew sits with his fingertips at the home row, his pallor overwritten by iridescent computerglow. His music is paused. A significant amount of time has passed, and he hardly knows how to close the gap, to sum things up, to handily crystallize and convey the person he is at this moment or who he has been in the intervening timespan ( Read more... )

As foretold, the waters rose a third time. Men in masks descended on Matthew's office and tore the walls asunder. Knocked over cabinets, disassembled desks, and ran great polyurethane tubes through the rubble. Industrial fans rip the humid air and disperse the spores the sprouted in the moist carpet ( Read more... )

Delvin opens the closet door to find a number of aromatic candles flickering atop his desk, casting a dancing shadow down around his bed. "Hey." says a smoky voice from the shadow. He lowers himself to see under the desk and as his eyes adjust to the dark, they meet hers. "Hey," he says ( Read more... )

"Ew," says Lichelle, her manicured fingernail picking at a buckled corner of countertop laminate. "I thought we agreed that granite is a must ( Read more... )

Counterpoint lives under Matthew’s desk. He’s made a little nest in the accumulated detritus, broken video game peripherals and spent sketchbooks. Matt offers him a hand to help him up but CP just shakes it. “Hey,” he says ( Read more... )

Matthew has a computer in a closet. The closet is sort of an office, in that it has a desk and a chair and a computer. Matthew can sit in his swivel chair and put his arms straight out to his sides and press his palms flat against either wall. The walls are a vibrant blue ( Read more... )