The minotaur told the mermaid he loved her, but their liaison lasted only so long, and when some years later the gods took note of the fruits of that tryst they did not fume or row but only wept for the wretched pink creature who would know no home on…

a possibly true story At 6 o’clock,  Henrietta watches Mr Pickering, Cecilia Payne, Williamina Fleming and the other computers go home. She promised to lock up, she usually does what she is told. The sun is dropping below the horizon, tinting the sky and the red-brick building next to the observatory.…

They won’t let me sleep. My father, a halo of insects around his head, is singing of Robbie Burns’ heart that’s apparently ‘in the highlands a-following a deer’, in Russian first, then in English. Drink always made him jolly, and it earned him our neighbours’ respect (before they met him…

Tyn wakes to fireflies playing in the soft areas between the bones making up his spine. To his wife, Abigail, tracing swollen pathways of whippings that echo an anger he keeps holed up in the dark parts of his mind. The part can’t nobody reach but him. Instead, Tyn sets…

I only drink one beer with dinner while encouraging her to have a second. I’m ready to make the sudden U-Turn onto McKalester towards St. Catherine’s hospital before Grace’s phone even rings. When Grace becomes lost in the maze of sanitized hallways, I play along even though I could navigate…

The grass here is greener than you’d think, despite crunching underfoot, despite being dry as bleached bones. But I don’t mind. This place, this terminus between void and light, is double-sided, constantly shifting between lies that might be fulfilled and truths never realized. I feel right at home.  I hear…

For six hundred and eighteen hours, Nora has lived in the space between moments. It wasn’t always this way; she once lived a normal, if somewhat mundane life. A timid woman, she dallied over decisions and erred always in the safety of the known.  She wore sensible shoes and thick…

We’ve traveled far, my crew and me, their captain. We’ve journeyed past thousands of stars and worlds. Our small ship has sailed through space. None of our kind has ever been this far away from home. Our voyage has taken decades. We’ve slept much of the time. Our automatic system…

They say that when the dead leave us, they aren’t really gone, they just go on to the next place. They say that time is like a river, a loop, and when you leave it at one point, you can jump back in again at another place. They say that…

Seconds ticked by on the clock. One, two, three… After sixty, it started over. In less than sixty seconds I saw her look up from the book she was reading. Her eyes met mine and changed me forever. She cracked a smile and looked back at the words on the page. Minutes went slower. It took minutes to gather…