Volume I, Nos. 1-13
Vol. I, Nos. 14-26
Vol. I, Nos. 27-39
Vol. I, Nos. 40-52
Volume II
Volume III
1. A Ride in the Snow
Looks like you need a lift, said Bert, rolling down the passenger window.
The guy looked like Frosty the fucking Snowman. He must have been walking down this road for an hour, thought Bert. I wonder where he left his car.
Oh, I won’t say no, the man said, climbing up and in. He didn’t dust himself off, even a little bit, and hunks of snow fell everywhere inside the cab. Bert could have been annoyed, that would have been justified, but that was something he was working on, calmness. Besides, he was in the wrong line of work to mind a little snow. He put the plow into gear and rumbled forward, increasing the wiper speed.
How long were you stuck out there? he asked, to be agreeable.
Let me tell you a story, the man said, dripping everywhere. I was born during a blizzard like this one. My mother told me. She’d never shut up about it actually. It was one of those stories she’d tell anyone who would listen. And now look at me, she’s twenty years dead and here I am telling you. Anyway, she’d tried to drive herself to the hospital, the stupid bitch, and jammed the car into a snowdrift. People die that way, especially out in the country where we were. Couldn’t get the car out, couldn’t even open the door, couldn’t barely move either, so big she was with me. I’m not a tall man now but I was a big baby, they tell me. So she’s sitting there for hours, dragged an old blanket over herself and in the end there was nothing for it but to pull her stinking panties off and start pushing. So she squirts me out her hole with all the blood and—and placenta, and all the other stuff and wraps us both up in this sticky blanket until a snowplow driver finally comes by and notices the car and hallelujah we are saved.
Bert stared out the windshield at the road and the chaos of snow. I—I wonder if I know the guy, he said. The driver. I’ve been doing this job a long time. Bert headed down the exit ramp. How old are you, anyway? he asked the stranger. And where do you want me to drop you?
The man said, Let me tell you another story.
💀
2. The Spat
Of course teenagers were always trouble. Hadn’t she been a terror to her sainted mother? Your sainted mother, repeated Noah, endorsing the irony.
She raised my brothers and me all by herself, no man around to help, she said. This was the sort of conversation she had with her son these days: half-serious, half a shared joke, constructed out of years of earlier conversations. The meaning didn’t lie in the words, but in the tone, the inflections, the calibration of impatience. She never would have let you stay out till one am without calling, she said.
I told you my phone died, said Noah.
Died. And here in this year of our Lord 2024, with nothing like a phone charger, a friend with a phone to borrow, an electrical grid too—
I fell asleep. The movie was boring. How could I call you if I was asleep?
It was—what was it?
What was what?
The movie.
It was called Eraserhead.
You fell asleep during Eraserhead? When she was Noah’s age, she’d watched Blue Velvet twice in a row, hiding in the basement with the sound as low as she could manage, praying her mother didn’t wake up and come ask her what she was doing.
It was in black and white, said the kid. This seemed to be the summation of Noah’s argument. And honestly she wasn’t sure where else to take this talk.
Just do better next time, she told him. This broke the tone, for sure. Prissy, moralistic, too serious. But wasn’t she being serious? She did want him to do better. She knew he was smoking pot (how much pot did you smoke, back in the day?), she supposed he was smart enough to use a rubber with that weird little girl he brought over that one time. And hadn’t she been risky at his age?
She could keep avoiding the issues, or she could call his father and—and what? Tom was likely to make it all worse. Or she could—
What’s for dinner? Noah asked. He saw the look on her face. Never mind, never mind. He went back to his phone.
To get away from him she stepped into the bathroom and locked the door. She looked at herself in the mirror. From behind her left ear, the small thin spiderish creature that lived in her hair poked its mandibled head out. She watched it as it delicately crawled across her earlobe, feeling that familiar old childhood sensation, its tiny jointed legs as soft as cotton threads.
Say it again like you did that one time, it whispered, and I can help. Say, I wish you were dead.
💀
3. Fee Fi Fo Fum
Now, when it happened, she just walked to a neighbor’s house. Gone were the days of panic and screaming and hiding in the cellar. The cellar was gone anyway, crushed in. Her son was gone too, and both of her daughters. Her husband she had at least been able to bury, along with the pulp and pieces of the other men in the village, after they had bravely sallied forth and died at the base of the mountain.
These days they built their homes with detachable roofs. It wasn’t as weatherproof, but there was less danger of structural failure in the walls when He lifted them off and tossed them aside. On this occasion she heard Him coming, which wasn’t always the case. Sometimes scouts could see Him walking out from the clouds at the top of the peak, but just as often He simply appeared in the fields, and started foraging before they could prepare.
What preparation, she thought? as she walked down the road to Sofiya’s house. Some of the mothers still put their children into the underground bunkers, but He always seemed to find them. Smelled them, she supposed. The fields around here were potted with holes, filled with splintered wood and pulverized water jugs. Sometimes a woman forgot herself, and tried to stab Him in the ankle with a kitchen knife. These women He mostly ignored. As long as He plucked one child, screaming, into the sky, He seemed content. He would depart, and not return for a week or a month or an hour.
When the railroad had been working, the next station had been three days’ travel. Now the tracks were twisted and rusted, stretching as often straight up into the sky as they did along the ground. And anyway she had no confidence that His kin were not everywhere in this country.
She took the opportunity to pick some wild flowers to decorate her front door. A glance back revealed His curious fingers poking fruitlessly through her home, smashing her last remaining chairs, she supposed, her grass-and-timber roof held carelessly in His left hand. As she watched, He let it fall to earth. Good, she thought, it seemed intact.
💀
4. The Neighborhood Fair
Turnout was low, probably because of the weather. Overcast and fifties in July! There’s your global warming for you, said dad.
Thanks, Obama! chirped Jacob. This was the ritual response. But dad barely acknowledged it. It was pretty boring. There was a booth advertising some sort of telephone company. Here was one for the neighborhood association. He’d already gotten his pop and mini-donuts and he supposed he could jump into the bouncy castle, but there was something queasy going on in his stomach and he could imagine bouncing, bouncing, bouncing and then blam! puke everywhere, on the walls, on the bouncy floor, on the other kids, bits of puke spraying and bouncing…
He decided to think of something else. He took dad’s hand. A bicyclist zipped by, kind of close, he might hit somebody if he kept doing that. Dad was talking to a lady in the architect’s booth. Why would dad be talking to an architect? Was he building a house? Were they moving? Jacob didn’t want to move. He liked their house. He tugged on dad’s hand. Dad introduced him to the lady, whose name was Alice. She looked a little like mom.
They sat for a while in the beer tent. Jacob kicked the table until dad told him to stop. Usually a beer tent was crowded and hot, remembered Jacob the street fair expert, but today it was cold inside, colder even than out of the street. A few groups of men huddled together on the far side of the tent. Something shot out from under their feet and disappeared behind a stack of kegs. Jacob jumped in his seat.
Something the matter? asked dad. He’d hardly touched his beer.
Just saw a cat over there, he said. It scared me a little.
A spring-loaded cat, said dad. That was their term for anything startling.
Back on the street, he saw another cat dart behind the Internet fiber booth. Dad was arguing with the hot dog guy.
Listen, fuck you, it’s perfectly fresh, said the hot dog man.
It’s gray. Look at it, it’s gray. And don’t swear in front of my son.
Fuck you! The guy grabbed the hot dog out of dad’s hands and flung it behind him. Ketchup and relish spattered on the laundromat’s window. The people inside turned to look. To Jacob they looked like they were half-asleep.
Come on, Jake. Dad tugged on his arm, hard! hard enough to hurt a little. Ow!
Oh, don’t be a baby! Dad pulled him down the street. Jacob looked back at the hot dog man. A cat was eating the discarded hot dog. Jacob stopped, ignoring dad’s pulling. No, that wasn’t a cat. It was nothing like a cat.
💀
5. The Splinter
Grandfather’s house was old, and she’d been warned not to run. There were hard wooden corners that could take your eye out, and here and there an exposed nail. Tetanus was a word that lurked in her imagination like a goblin. So it was her own fault that she got the splinter from the basement handrail. It hurt! She cried to mother and father but neither one could reach it with the tweezers. It was deep under the fleshy pad at the base of her thumb. The tweezing made it worse. She tried to make a fist, saying, don’t, don’t, but making the fist made it hurt even more.
The doctor couldn’t get it out either. He couldn’t even find it. Maybe it had already worked its way out. She said no, no it hadn’t. It still hurt. Mother insisted on an x-ray, but nobody saw anything.
Soon the tiny wound in her hand healed and the pain receded almost all the way. When she was twelve years old grandfather died and the palm of her hand swelled up and went red and ached for three days. When Richard Bradley broke her heart at the homecoming dance she cried all night and felt like there was something inside her hand that was crying also. Her mother died of breast cancer and the thing in her hand started struggling to move. She thought it wanted to relocate to her breast, out of sympathy or malignancy she didn’t know.
At thirty she had a miscarriage. The wound in her hand started bleeding. She told Steven she had accidentally stabbed herself with one of her own fingernails. She knew he thought it was intentional self-harm and she let him believe that. Some years later, it began reacting to the television news. A bad election result, and the splinter in her might start trembling in excitement. A war in Eastern Europe, and her hand puffed up and a colorless fluid began expressing from beneath her nails. She made a tourniquet, tight as she could with one hand, and chopped her hand off with a meat cleaver, but right away she knew it wasn’t enough.
By the time they let her out of the ward she could feel her phantom hand just as sensibly as ever. Sometimes it was at the end of her arm, sometimes it was ten feet across the room, but the splinter, whatever it was, remained her constant companion for the rest of her short life.
💀
6. A Task for Goldenrod
As soon as Marco left, she rose from bed and walked to the window. She unshrouded the birdcage, and Goldenrod woke with a chirp. She took him from his cage and placed him on her shoulder. She opened the window. Goldie knew what to do: he fluttered outside and followed Marco down the sidewalk.
She took a bath, leaving the bathroom door open. Before long Goldie returned, landing lightly on her shoulder. She cocked her head.
He has money, Goldie whispered. He’s not a golddigger. He has a big loft in Tribeca. No wife that I could see, but of course a man like that has girlfriends.
I’m not worried about girlfriends, she told him, stroking his feathers.
The next day, Goldie’s report on Andrew was less auspicious: Divorced, I think. Long Island address. The next day, Goldie’s report on Andrew was less auspicious: Divorced, I think. Long Island address. He stopped at a diner and ate alone. She frowned. Andrew had been promising, and he had such a smile, but she had a lifestyle to maintain. She could perhaps mold him a little, prod him this way and that, push him into shape. But that was tedious work—maybe better to stick with Marco or one of the others.
She sent Goldie out to spy on Bertram, and Marco again, and a new fellow named Francis whom she’d met at 21, who had a sweet smile but uninterpretable eyes. Goldie took a long time with this last one, and she paced in front of the open window for hours, worrying and waiting. When the bird finally returned after midnight it looked done in: feathers grimy, muscles trembling.
She took Goldie to her breast, placing him under her robe to warm his chilly body. Soon he calmed, her strong heartbeat relaxing him. He peeked his head up to look her in the face. He seemed to want to tell her something, but a shudder ran through him and he shook his beak from side to side. She wouldn’t press him on it.
Men! he chirped. I don’t know what you see in them.
💀
7. The Heliomagus
Appointments were rare and expensive. To be admitted into the presence of the Heliomagus was a rare privilege, and for those to whom it was granted, the restrictions were ironclad and grave: not a word of what passed in the presence of the Heliomagus, under pain of the most dire curses and nondisclosure agreements.
When his servant ushered in a client, blindfolded, hushed and reverential, and sat the client in the hard chair on the far side of the huge mahogany desk, when the servant whipped the blindfold off with a practiced flourish, what the client saw was the Heliomagus in his beautiful Italian suit, his only occult marker the small solar pin on his lapel. The desk was bare except for a lamé-shrouded object, spherical in shape. A crystal ball? The Heliogabalus would chat with the client, not to put them at their ease exactly, while the servant brought the tea laced with a mild hallucinogen.
When the Heliomagus deemed it time, he would slide the lamé drapery from the object, letting it pool at the base of the neck. It was the severed head of a man: his black hair in oiled curls, long black beard streaked with white, his eyes closed, but the client would see the eyelids twitch a bit, as if disturbed by the sudden light. The client, at this point, would recoil, but the Heliomagus would soothe them. This is Balthazar, he would explain, a most potent mage of Ancient Persia. An ancestor of mine.
Eventually the question would be asked: One question, one answer, one hundred thousand dollars, this was the agreement. Will the investment succeed? Will the police find out? Does my wife love another? One question, yes or no, but the Heliomagus had never, never to anyone’s knowledge, been wrong. He removed the top of Balthazar’s head and rummaged his fingers around in his bloody brain, manipulating the hidden wires therein to cause the mouth to twitch and the eyes to roll behind their lids, to find the answer the client most needed. (Balthazar was an old drunk the Heliomagus had spotted on the streets of Boston, whom he had murdered for his marvelous beard.)
Sweating but exhilarated, the client would depart, and the Heliomagus would wipe his fingers and light a cigarette. But this day, after the woman with the cheating spouse had left, he hesitated and turned Balthazar’s head around. The eyes, open, stared at him. The Heliomagus was afraid, but in the end he formulated his last question.
Will I—? he asked.
Balthazar said, No.
💀
8. The Midlife Crisis
It’s just a midlife crisis!
It’s not a midlife crisis, said the Devil.
I never meant to cheat on my wife!
You absolutely meant to cheat on your wife. You did cheat on your wife.
What do you know, anyway? This guy was making Carl mad.
Keep your voice down, said the Devil. This is a public bar.
Are you some kind of blackmailer?
Yes.
Well, you’re out of luck. I don’t have money. The most of, what I got, it’s tied up in retirement.
You won’t need it.
Now just a minute.
You won’t need it, Carl, insisted the Devil. You’ll be dead by sixty.
I’m only fifty-eight!
You’re fifty-nine. You lie about even the most trivial things.
Who are you? I don’t deserve this kind of third degree.
I think they’ll call it first degree, Carl. Once they find her.
Carl went quiet. The Devil poked him in the shoulder with a sharp fingernail. Carl twitched away. I’ll suck you off in the bathroom, suggested Carl.
No thank you, Carl. That wouldn’t be a healthy way to start your last year of life.
I wish you’d stop saying that.
Do you see that man at the end of the bar, drinking alone?
Yes.
He wants to kill his wife too. Why don’t you go over, have a word with him, give him some pointers.
What.
Go on now.
Carl stood up, wondering at himself. He crossed to the man at the bar and sat down next to him. They spoke quietly for a moment. Then the man stood and rushed out the front door. The bartender asked Carl something. Carl shrugged and finished off the last of the man’s beer, then returned to the Devil.
What did he say?
You saw. He got freaked and split.
The Devil was commiseratory. You’ll get better at it. You’re just starting out.
I won’t have much time to meet new friends if I’m going to be dead in a year!
You might not think so, said the Devil. But you won’t lack for company.
Well, aren’t you the sinister motherfucker, said Carl.
Mmm, said the Devil, we should probably talk about that too.
💀
9. The Grand Style
And here, of course, you are again, in this fine Joshua Reynolds piece—look how playful your expression is as you play with the duke’s children (from his first wife, you see, a charming woman by all accounts but frail). Blessed with a fine gift of a stepmother though, said the countess, coy.
Catherine had misheard. She looked a bit closer at the painting, out of politeness. She supposed the woman in the silk brocade bore a resemblance to herself, but was the countess actually suggesting some sort of ancestry? That would make Catherine and the countess… cousins of some sort, she supposed, indulging for just a moment in a fantasy of ancient wealth and privilege. But she should rejoin the others now: countess, this has been lovely, but could you direct me back to the group?
The countess must not have heard. This one over here you might like even more, she said, unslipping the velvet rope and leading Catherine onward with a light touch on her shoulder. My husband would say it was second-rate, but I think you can see the resemblance more clearly. I think Reynolds is very fine with his portraits, but in the groups he gets a little sloppy. The relative positioning of all the faces, I think it is. A little strained, unnatural.
Catherine smiled and looked at the new painting, then recoiled in shock.
It can have that effect sometimes, said the countess.
But it’s me! Catherine almost shouted. It’s exactly me! Who painted this?
Alas, a poor artist whose name is lost in time, explained the countess. He must have had access to the finest of society, though. Look at the gown, the sash around the waist—almost eastern.
Who—who was the woman?
Well, it’s you, my dear. Don’t you remember? The countess reattached the velvet rope.
I—don’t remember.
The countess was sympathetic. It’s all right, dear. Why should you? You died so young.
💀
10. Gnaeus Paris, Transfuga
When Caesar destroyed Pompey’s army at the battle of Pharsalus, Gnaeus Paris decided he had had enough of Rome. Hiding under the carcass of a horse until sundown, he snuck away and headed north. He stripped off his armor but his gladius he kept, using it the next morning to kill a peasant of roughly his size and steal his clothing. He made his way to the coast and joined the crew of an actuaria bound for the land of the Sarmatians, where he stayed for twelve years working as a mercenary.
When he was forty years old he lost his left eye to a Dacian falx and once again he had had enough. He crossed the Tanaïs river and walked east, stealing and robbing as he went.
Footsore on a rainy night he pushed open the door of a dirty hovel and slew the man inside. In the morning he woke to the sight of the man’s widow, an old crone, crouched in a corner, staring at him. Why had she not slit his throat as he slept?
Awake, man of Rome! she said, patting her toothless mouth with gleeful fingers. Sitting up from the filthy pallet he took up his gladius and beheaded her. Very little blood, but the head rolled round and round the dirt floor. The old man’s body was nowhere to be seen.
That night, ten miles away, he slept under a fig tree after gorging himself on its fruits and an hour later he woke with the shits. He voided his slops cramping among the roots, and in the branches above him the crone chortled again: Awake, awake, you man of Rome!
Gnaeus Paris ran. He lost his footing and fell down a rocky slope, impaling his left leg on his gladius. When he tried to stand, cold hands dragged him down into the bloody mud. His empty eye socket was clogged with muck. His teeth chewed earth.
The man he had killed in the hovel said, Sleep now, boy of the west, be at your ease. From far above, the goddess watched them with all the emotion of a starless sky.
💀
11. The Roach King
When Kevin Peters and Todd Beery created the Roach King, they had no idea how successful he would be. From a throwaway villain in their comic book series Techbro Teens, the Roach King (tormented, philosophical, imperious and cruel yet somehow noble) spun off into his own series, with his own stable of antagonists (the Fog, AI Al, the Ant Agonist). Soon there were animated series, Funko figurines, Roach cosplay at all the conventions.
Hasbro licensed him for toys, Asmodee bought the board game rights. Warner Brothers launched an extensive media blitz, tying the King in with their existing properties. The Roach King met Superman. The Roach King was interviewed on Jimmy Fallon (via Zoom). The Roach King sang with Jack White. The Roach King met Huckleberry Hound. Inevitably, new Kafka adaptations. McDonald’s launched their Roach Meal, with toy inside. Children shrieked.
In my neighborhood, on the corner of Lake and Lyndale, the Roach King dominated a billboard. He stared malignly across the street at the baby in the pro-life ad.
Roach King graffiti. Roach King street gangs. On Halloween all the trick or treaters wobbled their antennae and hissed We will take it all, Techbro Teens, we will take it all, in the Roach King’s Madagascan accent.
Warner Brothers hit on a novel approach to raise awareness of the Roach King. Every time you turned on a screen there was a chance that a digitally animated cockroach would scuttle across it. I was watching Sesame Street with my daughter and roaches kept pouring out from Oscar’s can. Roaches scuttled across Wolf Blitzer and invaded the news covering Gaza.
I watched some reruns of The X-Files last night. Do you remember that one from the third season? Yeah, about cockroaches. At one point they play a little game on the audience, and a cockroach seems to crawl over the actual TV screen. Sure got a jump out of me the first time I saw it back in the ’90s, believe me. This time though, I knew it was coming and it didn’t bother me, though two of three of the new Warner Brothers cockroaches chased after it a moment later, and I thought to myself, man, I’m getting pretty tired of this. One level of roach can be artistic; a second one surprising, but a third is just depressing.
Hiss hiss, yes, I hear you. Very original. Very funny.
🪳
12. Coronation Day
She’d been in the bookstore many times, but had never noticed that little nook before. It smelled of mildew, but the spines of the books seemed unbroken, the covers clean and unmarred. She browsed, growing more excited by the moment.
The book was surprisingly affordable. Barely two days’ of skipped meals. Back in the studio, with the moonlight coming through the skylight, she lit a lamp and began to read. After some time, her eyes began to feel the strain. She rubbed them, setting the book down for a moment. There was a man sitting in her other chair. He was young, good-looking, and wore a yellow suit.
Don’t let me interrupt you, said the man.
Cassie returned to her reading. In the morning she was elated. Such good news! She descended the five flights to the street and walked to the Polish guy’s shop and bought a pistol. Hiding it in her jacket pocket she walked thirty blocks to the park and arrived just as the mayor was taking the stage. The stage was rich with bunting and flags. A line of schoolchildren stood shyly as the mayor gave them each a medal in turn. Cassie felt a wave of indignance. She stepped through the crowd and began firing.
When she was out of bullets some men tackled her. One of them bashed her face against the sidewalk until Cassie felt her nose break. In the cell, after the doctor had seen her, they told her that she’d killed a boy and wounded a young woman. And she’d killed the mayor.
Cassie’s black eyes shone with joyful tears. Through her imperious broken teeth she howled in majesty and awe. Bring me my crown and queens! she commanded. Now I am king of America!
💀
13. The AM Commute
By nature he wasn’t a morning person, but what’re you gonna do? The commute took thirty-five minutes if he left at seven, but twice that long if he left at eight. There was something fresh about the city that early in the morning, he said, on the days he felt awake enough to try to convince himself. The light, the morning haze maybe, the relative emptiness of the highway. As a teenager he had loved staying awake through the night and spreading his arms to the dawn. His pagan phase.
The AT+T building, the Ford tower, those concave apartment buildings that looked like stalks of celery. There hadn’t been downtown construction of any note for fifteen years. The skyline was as static as the Rocky Mountains. The big pole with the car and the mannequin on it. The two weird domes that looked like tits. In the evening he put it all behind him. Casey would already be home when he got there, in his bedroom with his games. Laura worked late on Wednesdays, so Sam made dinner. He ate with Casey and set a plate aside for Laura. At eleven pm she arrived, kissed him goodnight, and ate in the kitchen.
Next week: the AT+T building, the Ford tower, the black girders of the LRT, and a new, tall building that had never been there before. A proud, almost arrogant thing, tiered like a Sumerian ziggurat but taller, oh, very tall, he explained to his coworkers that morning, why didn’t I ever notice it before? Overfamiliarity, they said. You can get into a sort of trance on the freeway. But I swear it was never there before, he insisted, to his own incredulity. Well, what was there yesterday? asked Anna, stirring her tea. He couldn’t remember.
On the ride home he kept looking dangerously in the rear view mirror, but nothing, just a confusion of winter twilight. Dark at 4:45 in the afternoon. At least, he said, he forced that extra hour on himself in the mornings.
The next day the building was still there, as solid and stubborn as every other element of the skyline. You can’t just construct a skyscraper overnight, he reminded himself. This isn’t The Jetsons.
He worked. He came home. He couldn’t sleep. Laura slept, he sat up in bed. He wouldn’t disturb her by turning on a light. If he still smoked, he would’ve gone through a pack, he imagined.
He left before dawn. Halfway down the highway, the sun rose and backlit the skyline. In the flat light it all looked two-dimensional. The sun rose up the length of the ziggurat. The top was still embedded in the dark of the sky.
He could imagine pulling over and running up the side of the building, reaching the roof just as the sun topped the tallest of the city’s obelisks. He took the offramp, three exits early.
At nine-thirty that night Casey realized he was hungry and went downstairs. Mom wouldn’t be home for a while yet and dad hadn’t made dinner. Annoyed, he cooked himself a box of mac and cheese and brought it back to his room.
💀