My father, a compulsive liar, once told me that a person dies every time a leaf falls from a tree. If you catch a leaf before it touches the ground, you save a person’s soul. It’s early September in Chicago, and I’ve already let thousands of souls perish. I walk to work, from one graffiti-stained side of Wrigleyville to the other. The sidewalks, congested with foot traffic an hour before, are now clear. The only people I encounter are…
Issue: July 2009
Brother Zimmy Fly
Bob and I dragged ourselves out of bed and were at the church by five, but six other families had camped out overnight and were already in line. Macy was [...]
Tough Love
Jason started the day knowing in his gut that Isobel was about to drop the It’s Not You, It’s Me speech. He’d seen the writing on the wall through his [...]
As You Desire Me
Today’s Numero Uno has a prepub fetish, so naturally I put on the prostitot body. He comes into my velvet-draped workplace and sees a twelve-year-old, tall for her age, with [...]
Iron Boots
She ran, clanking. Ping, grind, huff of breath. Muscles popped and stretched in her legs. She ran, unknowing to nowhere with a tickle of fear fading in the back of [...]
Heavenly
When the boiler in the basement of Temple B’nai Chaim broke down, Zhou Lei decided it was too cold for our weekly Chinese lesson. Our parents were summoned by phone, [...]
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, by Robert Charles Wilson
The Hugo-winning author of Spin writes a futuristic novel that reads like historical fiction.