Fiction

She’s a healthy mussel. . . . She’s a wicked mussel. She’s a sliver of the liver of a river whose liver is sick. An ugly river, voluble with its complaints. I had this story from precisely such a river. Well, and so the credence you accord to trickling notes diluted and caught up in …

Last summer everyone I knew was trying to give me advice, but something made me certain that anything worth listening to was going to come from Carl. Carl was my boss at the Maple Grotto, a retirement community with on-site hospice care. Every morning he would gather the grounds crew and maintenance guys in his …

“The peephole is installed backward,” my one-night stand said as I sat up in bed. We were in his high-rise studio apartment. “I keep meaning to tape a piece of paper over it.” I thought about what this meant. A tiny aperture gave passersby in the hallway a fish-eye view into the bedroom. It wasn’t …

You think summers in New York are humid now, but this is nothing compared to 1983. That year the air was full of heavy metals. Headless bodies in topless bars, the first AIDS vigil, candle flames seizing in a night that felt like wet fleece. When de Kooning’s Seated Woman got up and walked away …

If her head gets cold, it starts to hurt, so on days when the sun cannot dry her hair on the short walk from the sea to Grandma’s house, Alfhild’s father massages her scalp until her thin, little body stops shivering under the towel. It has become a routine, a ritual almost; Alfhild finishing her …

Finally, fifteen months after he died, I get my son’s death certificate in the mail. There it is: the manner of his death, the time, date, place, and also his name. It’s misspelled, both first and last. His middle name they got right. “I like the name, you like the name. But you just know …

Piya has just turned thirty. She works in her family’s hotel. Tonight she will become pregnant. In twenty-some weeks, she will lose the baby, and the state of Indiana will sentence her to twenty years in prison for feticide. One year for every week. But for now, it is early on Tuesday, and on Tuesdays …

Peng Soon had knocked the glass of vodka and lime out of Paul’s hand at Taboo the first time they met. He had swung out his arm to illustrate a point in the story he was telling—a recent sexual conquest on a business trip to Taipei—and his hand met Paul’s glass. Unruffled, Peng Soon ran …

    Assistant Editor Molly Reid: Margaret Emma Brandl’s “Mukbang” is a subtle critique of our current political situation, a nod to fake news, an exploration of cultural preoccupations with image and internet celebrity, and a sensory extravaganza—in 378 words. It’s a doozy. Also, if you’re not already familiar with the practice of mukbang, Google …

Wendy can’t help hovering outside the den when her fourteen-year-old daughter’s older friend Harris first comes over to play video games on a Saturday. They’re talking about a woman named Cora Goodnight, all over the local news for killing (probably) her three husbands and her pastor. The church-directory photo posted with each telling of her …