“In this story, day zero is when I live, and you die.”
(fiction)
Category: Fiction
The Friday after Johnny was caught cutting up his Adderall, the AC unit in the teachers’ lounge broke.
(fiction)
He remains in place next to the stove, watching everyone, observing their flaws.
(fiction)
Grigor, as everyone who met him agrees, had been dropped on his head as a baby. Or else nursed on straight vodka.
(fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“The next morning, my training began at Achieve English. In a week, I was teaching. I’d never taught anything.”
(fiction)
“Because what she wanted was the kind of radiant glamour that her mother possessed, that she lived and exuded: a rarified air of such pure grace that only a handful of humans might possess it.”
(fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“We washed our hands vigorously after reading all these things. We wiped down our doorknobs and our computer keyboards.”
(fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“The rooms become increasingly more expensive, as one gets closer to the Abyss.”
(fiction)
I can finally legitimately stroll into a Victoria’s Secret looking for a bra-and-panty set for myself and not pretend to be doing Christmas or birthday shopping for my wife.
(fiction)
The shadows of the bamboo leaves shivered across Cassandra’s face. Even in the moonlight, she looked like she was planning something.
(fiction)
When the train lurches, I move like the world’s clumsiest pole dancer. Are third-trimester pole dancers a thing? No doubt someone’s into that.
(fiction)
They trained me up, taught me how to alpha. Posture, voice, aspect. Then they gave me all the accouterments. Even I was impressed with myself afterward.
(fiction)
Now the extent of my friend’s madness was clear. I couldn’t understand how I’d failed to realize it earlier.
(fiction/translation)
His job was merely to photograph: to catalogue the state of the problem. Save the radiology for radiologists.
(fiction)
She didn’t go to a hospital—with the traffic in Bogotá, she’s sure she would have ended up giving birth in a taxi!
(fiction)
I don’t know what he expected to see. My disfigurement is not external
(fiction)
ACM’s first official Forthcoming publication–work from a soon-to-be published book
“There isn’t any us, baby.”
(fiction)
A tabby, a calico, a Bengal, a Persian, even one of those hairless Egyptian numbers. Black cats, white cats, ginger cats, grey cats. They climbed all over each other, over the trees, in piles on the ground. Floor to ceiling, nothing but cats.
(fiction)
“Why don’t we come to an agreement then? I’ll buy the alcohol if you finally stop working.” Hassan said as he sipped his Scotch and watched her with his psychologist’s stare. She had the uneasy feeling she was a frog in his pot, and he was slowly turning up the heat.
(fiction)
Meanwhile, the puppy, who, according to the book she bought, is color blind, lies in the grass and unsentimentally, methodically, stops beetles in their tracks with his paw. No ethical standards, this one. He does what he wants.
(fiction)
In the parking lot, her fears festered. She was about to explode and had to do something, anything, to distract herself. Between working long shifts and taking care of Jason, she had no time for friends other than her co-workers, and she couldn’t face them.
(fiction)
Everything has its “sleeves,” I think, has its crap that just dangles there and overcomplicates things, even people, even me, especially me, or my mother for god’s sake, or my finances, or my body, good lord, and the same holds true for the city, I think.
(fiction)
The universe is expanding, a voice reported. Bits and particles of it are shooting out from some
ancient central point like sparks from a Roman candle, and some day, when all the expanding
glowing bits of matter in our universe have stretched themselves out tight like a rubber band, instead of it all coming roaring back to the center, as we’d thought, the universe may instead simply continue to expand. So any parting of ways could be permanent.
(fiction)
It was a space where his Swahili was adequate—he only needed to know numbers and how to say nashuka hapa or command shika when paying the conductor. He liked the feeling of anonymity yet knowing the system.
(fiction)
Earlier I heard the server compare ube’s flavor to marshmallows, which irritated me. I didn’t like how my homeland sweet was reduced to something as common as marshmallows. It is so much more.
(fiction)
Could it be this simple, to be a human man?
(fiction)
But now, years later, she has to find Judge sahib regardless. You see, Hope has no expiry date. It’s like foreign occupation.
(fiction, satire)
On their first date, my friend’s fiancée talked about her job. She’s a mortician. She prepares cadavers for a funeral, cremation, or whatever is decided. She cleans the cadavers and replaces their blood with pink embalming fluid. If she has to apply makeup, she does. She thinks of herself as an artist. She makes clean portraits. She said that word a lot. Cadavers.
(fiction)
The Russian lived with his parents and grandparents on the other side of town in a tiny crumbling apartment near the library.
(fiction)
Most of the lies were about my mother, but I only learned about the lies years later at my mother’s deathbed
(fiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 