Night in the house of my childhood invaded more than corners: it crept into the soul, a golem breeding nightmares. Awakened by my screams, mother came to my bedside offering comfort. She sat there, a dark shadow, her glinting eyes in deeper pools of darkness. And I agreed that I was comforted, oh quickly …
My boys won’t eat. The youngest doesn’t swallow as much as smear and fling. As though he thinks food’s taken through the skin. I blend his baby glop, peas and carrots and little rags of meat pureed together by the hurtling blade, and when I bring it to him strapped in his high throne he …
I have a brother. I never met him. His name is Mark. He’s the same age as I am. Mark only lived thirty miles away from me the entire time we were growing up. I was in Lebanon, Pennsylvania and he lived near Harrisburg, the state capital. Our father, Billy Lee Wells, already had a …
A soldier on leave from the Garguantuan War, Maggie’s husband whistled the path home at the thought of her vegetable stew. Maggie would have beamed for his arrival had she not been forced to squeeze between enormous ankles, duck under a nose holding coats, to greet him. He dragged her out to display his bounty: …
for Melissa Ensephalopus is not an arctic creature, she says. It is in the line of sirens and sinuses, octopi and angels. No leviathan, or sexually aberrant penguin, but no study has been conducted. It walks upright on tentacles, though, has walrus teeth in a snake’s head. It doesn’t suffer from deep-sea gigantism like Architeuthis …
8:01 a.m.: A train whistles, and Godzilla cannot find it. A flock of vultures flies in circles. Godzilla, bored with smashing expensive buildings, spins, staring at the birds. 10:10 a.m.: Dizzy from spinning, Godzilla drops into a doughnut shop, and his tail dips in the deep-fryer. He roars and runs in more circles. 10:59 a.m.: …
I wanted Freddy to cut up the jerk, but he always went for the girl first. He’d splash his sweater with blood, his teeth behind a smirk caked in amber and the residue of teenage souls. The subtext of claws in flesh, thrust performed in private with give and take. I spent most of high …
The little one, Pearl, rose early with a head full of ideas. She was the last of her blood; no other blood survived. Granted the sunrise, she wormed to the ladder and clambered to the surface grating. The monsters who ruined the world needled and crushed, chittering above. Teeth, they termed them though they had …
Leaving the airport is what frightens her, walking from the cocoon of baggage carousels and rental car booths out into the brightness of the California sun. Natalie loves planes, the enormous airlessness of them, the cold of the window pressed against her cheek, and the efficient flight attendants with their carts full plastic dinner trays …
I tell them there are monsters everywhere, but they never believe me. Not really. They hire me often enough—I even have to turn down jobs—but they don’t really believe me. Even now they aren’t paying attention. They know where their children are, and they can be there quickly in the case of a skinned knee, …