fiction

Company Girl

“It’s funny, you get to some floors and its just women—” “Only women?” “You know the kind leftover from the Eighties—” “I used to wonder what happened to all those coke-head powerbabes. Do they still wear shoulder pads?” “They wear all kinds of weird shit. The kinder gentler power suits y’know? Then on some floors, it’s all white male executives with Black female associates— they’re not ...

The Witchfield

Diary entry: June 23. We arrived in Ekuete Djeri today. I rode alone with my mom’s driver, Rafir. Just as well, I was feeling kind of irritable. I don’t enjoy being forced to come here like this. It was an extremely exhausting three-hour ride into the hinterland. It makes you wonder how the British explorers worked up the moral audacity to travel so deep into these parts… ...

Millennia

“Sometimes the soul takes the shape of a separate entity; you recognize yourself as a reflection and thus become enlightened—” I told him I would stick to espresso.

THE WHITE ROOM (excerpt from The Sea of Lightning)

Session IV (from transcript) DR.: You’ve had this recurring dream for a couple of weeks, maybe we should talk about that today. OTTO: No — DR.: I talked to the Directrix about your requests Otto. The matter is under consideration— OTTO: Her answer of course is no. DR.: But you don’t know that for a fact— OTTO: Yes I do. Do you think my demands are unreasonable, Doctor? (silence) DR.: What ...

Otto’s Cell excerpt from ‘The Sea of Lightning’

“all pain is geological” In a future that seems very much like the present, the talents of convicted criminal masterminds are harnessed by NATO to develop new war and intelligence technologies. They are incarcerated in former monasteries where they may conduct their research in relative ease and peace. The former abbey of Vézelay is such an institution, and now with a mysterious ...

FLIGHT

In the street I feel very unsafe, frightened. Killer Angels roam the streets. With me is a small boy, I am here to protect him. He says nothing, he too is scared, and huddles against me. I mean to comfort him, but I tremble. The streets are so unsafe. I press hard at the doorbell. My keys do not seem to fit into the lock, I do not know if this is because I am nervous or because the locks have ...

LILITH-VUE

May I interest you in a radical new cinema— The Lilith-Vue?First let’s (re)acquaint ourselves with Lilith— a forage through our religio -mythological catalogues of mankind’s conception: Lilith was Adam’s wife before Eve—deemed unsuitable because of her sexual voracity and disdain of the Missionary position. As far as sex was concerned, she liked to be the top banana. Someone ...

Flash Flood Warning

...the taste of insecurity; metallic trace of anger forming in my blood; jealousy in mineral compounds, the acrid by-products of lust. Your exasperation.

BELLEPHERON DRACO

In the midst of our Thanksgiving Dinner the bell rang. We froze. My younger brother got up. He had become the elected “welcome” official in these times, as he was a newly ordained Jesuit priest. No one would dare lay a finger on him. He came back to the dining room, “It’s for you, a friend of yours from New York,” I went to the living room and there was Petard. I hadn’t seen him in a ...

THIS AMERICAN DREAMTIME IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY FLKR(TM)

Originally published in TRUCE issue V (download PDF) I. —Have you done this before? —You keep asking. What’s it to you? —Just doing my job. —Whatever. —So you know this can last up to 16 hours. And it can go horribly, painfully wrong… —Will you stop! What do we have here? He spreads out an array of small neat translucent envelopes with miniature labels—illustrated to advertise their ...

Be Yourself Tonight

Mocha Bar: a sea of ghetto fab and in the midst of all that, an anomaly— a red headed Viking stares at me—or should I say we exchange covert glances while I attempt to focus on a martini, or an old friend; a new acquaintance; clocking the Viking’s movements from my locus of interaction. Glimpsed on the landing, dancing with some gyrating unknown; lost for a second, but I look up from my ...

Entertainment, Tonight

The couple next to me are being effortlessly annoying. She indulges the conceit of being the only beautiful girl in the world, and he’s preying on her idiocy. At some point she gets up for the bathroom, he glances over at me and smiles. He takes out a cigarette, “Do you have a light?”