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Fiction

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Drums of Zaragoza
We practiced in the attic of her father’s orthodontic surgery. Stacked neatly against the back wall were hundreds of small white boxes each containing chalky casts of patients’ teeth. Orthodontistry is a good source for band names. We settled on Acid Etch, the process by ...

The Precious One
Yes, this delicate one led a precious existence. I don’t doubt this for a moment because I understand him, and this being the case, my pen hardly dares to describe or, let’s say, sketch the one who was sitting in a room, reading and trying his best to believe himself happy. ...

People Are Streinz
Seven months without a single dream. Seven whole months. The twenty-first of May was the last time I had a dream. I remember because it was also the last time it rained around here. And I remember because it was Lena’s name day and I said it was a good sign that it rained and ...

The Locked Room
Takashi dressed in long black rags, ripped fishnet stockings, and big black boots with long loose laces that splatted at the floor when he walked. He smelled strongly of old sweat and cigarette smoke, and his face was scabbed from tearing his pimples open and squeezing the pus ...

The Sunstroke
What is a vacation by the sea, if not a return to eternal youth? Every summer, land-locked Muscovites flock to the Black Sea to face rowdy crowds, suspect food, infernal partying and drinking, horrible beach music—all for the sake of a dazzling day in the water followed by an ...

From “All the Houses”
November 03, 2015
Often when I tell people I grew up in Washington, D.C., they ask me if I grew up in the city proper or in the suburbs. “In the city,” I tell them, though I’ve felt funny saying it. “But it was like a suburb,” I’ve sometimes added, because I grew up in Cleveland Park, ...

The Third Son
In a regional town, an old woman died. Her husband, a retired factory worker of seventy, walked to the telegraph office and sent six identical telegrams to remote places: “Mother died come home father.” He watched with reddened eyes as the aged telegraph worker counted the ...

Monticello
The scene: Just before midnight, July 3, 1826, at Monticello. Thomas Jefferson is gravely ill after a series of strokes. The next day is the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and Jefferson is widely expected to make a public statement. His pro-slavery ...

Bitter River
October 12, 2015
Impeccable John Connerly stepped through the front door of his home in Rio Agrio. He looked at the sky for weather, then made his way down the cobbles toward the main street of the village. From behind a curtained window, Kymbat watched him move with handsome purpose, as though ...

Life after Death
Life after Death? Yes. Can I help you? Well, you know . . . I saw your ad in that travel magazine. AFAR? or Destinations? I don’t remember. It was at the doctor’s office. Does that matter? Just wondering. It wouldn’t have been The New Yorker would it? One of those little ...

From Aurora
Excerpted from Kim Stanley Robinson’s new novel Aurora, published July 7, 2015, by Orbit Books. So there they were: in the ship, in orbit around Aurora, which was in orbit around Planet E, which orbited Tau Ceti, 11.88 light years away from Sol and Earth. Now there were 1,997 ...

Side Boob and Insensibility
ED. NOTE—In keeping with the current (and, some might say, callous) publishing craze for updating Jane Austen’s work—Alexander McCall Smith was requested to “reimagine” Emma, for example, and had the nerve to comply—we offer you the following short account of a ...