Ghost Parachute

Beyoncé sits on the beach at sunset. She hugs her knees to her chest, her bare feet seeping into the wet sand, small waves rolling around her ankles. Sea foam fizzes between her toes, leaving whispers of white grit on the bare skin of her thighs, the tops of her feet. In the distance, the […]

Smoke and foam grappled for dominion over a closet-sized half-bath. Karla swung the fire extinguisher like a champion air guitar player struggling with a real axe. Patty scrambled off the charred commode. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Karla shouted. “I told you, it burns when I pee. I need to see a doctor.” […]

For once, the metro was on time. So I was early. Fifteen minutes to spare. Should I get a table and check my phone before my friends showed up for lunch? Or should I walk around the block? I had choices. The sun was shining. And my new Eddie Bauer blazer was perfect for the […]

When he knocked, Mr. Wolf was in his tiny kitchen preparing his breakfast: a piece of cantaloupe and some bad oatmeal. His many colored pills lay on the counter by a pile of half opened mail. He knew he shouldn’t, but he lit a cigarette and exhaled. How, he thought, had it come to this? […]

Beatrix Kiddo, aka Black Mamba, attempts to break though the coffin where she’s been left to die. Her captor left her a flashlight before nailing shut the lid, though a flashlight does little good so far underground. But now Beatrix can see the narrow walls, the low roof. She remembers Pai Mei’s warning that one […]

When Whitney returned from her fifth mission, she didn’t care about how it felt to hold her husband. Whitney missed space. In space, on the shuttle, there had been so much of it. On Earth, Whitney watched bluebirds mate and envied how they flapped their wings after and returned to the sky. It was the […]

I should have known something would happen at a nightclub with a bouncy house. It’s unsanitary, allowing drunk adults, not in full control of their limbs or their bladders or their inhibitions, to jump around in an enclosed space, sometimes with no pants on and sure as hell with no helmet. The place was called […]

Anthony Bourdain’s Secret Fetish for Kitsch Ingredients Barbie cake Ham and Bananas Hollandaise Avon collectible cologne bottles Velvet posters   Barbie cake How did all of this cake get in my hair? I sit up in an unfamiliar bed. I have vague memories of the night before: being hit on by the TV chef Anthony […]

When he awoke, the beluga whale was still breathing. Around him, Marguerite bay scalloped into smaller fractals of watery inlets where the layered piles of pebbles and rocks and boulders increased in size as he looked away from the weathering coast. The creature’s chest rose and fell shallow, slow, where it lay prone on the […]