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Baffler Archives: Stories

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Claustropolis: 1984
November 08, 2020
In Bhopal, I could lie low. In Bhopal, there would be instructions for me. Because I had been told not to take the express, I traveled on a local, in an unreserved bogie. The whiskey was Director’s Special, a parting gift from Gupta’s people. I didn’t even wait till ...

Working Vacation
September 07, 2020
OK, so it’s 1850. This guy Allan Pinkerton claims he stopped someone from assassinating the president, and the president hires him to do his personal security during the Civil War, which was a very dramatic thing that happened when the South said WE WILL FUCKING KILL YOU IF WE ...

Shelves
“I was having coffee with my subconscious. He was a peculiar looking man. Small, with a waxed mustache and crossed legs. He repeatedly called me Escobar, though I told him, ‘My name is not Escobar. It is Verskin.’ And he said, ‘What do you know?’ And I said, ‘I know ...

Barn Fowl Drowning in the Rain
The pilgrims come every day, all of them the same: ducking underneath the garage door before it’s settled into its cradle up with the sawdust and the rafters and the cobwebs as fine as angel hair clogged with upward-floating prayers. The pilgrims’ lightning-veined faces all ...

The Promised Hostel
March 09, 2020
Carl is a bipolar orthopedic podiatrist, and he’s fussy at the nipple. He’s been on a nursing strike for the past several days, and Maddy is worried that she’s doing something wrong. She massages a breast, priming the milk for him. After a few false starts, he’s able to ...

Juan Garín
Spain, 9th century He lived as a hermit in a cave in the mountains, performing austerities. Satan, jealous of his piety, assumed the form of another hermit, living in a nearby cave. The Count of Barcelona, convinced that his beautiful teenaged daughter was possessed, sent her ...

Agnes Blannbekin
Austria, 1243–1315 Although called a saint by many, the Vatican never recognized her. She was a poor peasant who became a nun and practiced extreme fasting in solidarity with the suffering of the world and of Jesus on the cross. She was considered strange and was disliked in ...

Brief Lives (IV)
Vanna of Orvieto (Italy, d. 1306) Her heart burned so intensely that she took off all her clothes to pray and still was drenched in sweat; when she went into a rapture, stretched out as though on the cross, mosquitoes would land on her unblinking eyes. Frederick of ...

Margaret Of Città Di Castello
Italy, 1287–1320 She was born blind, a hunchback, a dwarf who could barely walk. Her aristocratic parents had hoped for a son; ashamed, they kept her hidden in a locked room. At sixteen, she was secretly taken to a church in another town where miracles had occurred. There was ...

Hadewijch*
Belgium, 13th century I saw a queen, wearing a gold dress, and her dress was full of eyes, and all the eyes were transparent, like fiery flames and yet like crystals. The crown she wore on her head had as many crowns, one above the other, as there were eyes in her dress. She ...

Magdalena of the Cross
Spain, 1487–1560 A devout child, at the age of five she was praying in her church in Córdoba when she heard beautiful, ethereal music and a handsome young man with long black hair appeared before her. He was assumed to be Jesus himself, and word spread through the city. She ...