Your Gold-Country Adventure

Welcome! We’re looking forward to your stay at Doomtown Manor, California’s Most Haunted Guest House! Your itinerary for six (6) guests is listed at the bottom of this email. We have received your deposit and the notarized liability waivers, and you have accepted our Terms and Conditions.  Located in Northern California’s fabled Gold Country, the village of Doomtown offers nature hikes, river rafting, llama wrangling, panning for gold and Roadshow-quality antiquing. From the old mines to the historic Chinese cemetery, the town drips California history. The jewel in the village’s crown is Doomtown Manor, built… Read More »Your Gold-Country Adventure

Remothering

Kestra hasn’t read Freud, but she trusts him when he says that everything is the mother’s fault. It was a validating truism for her twenties, and a constructive aspiration in her young thirties. Lately, though, as a mantra, it’s become less motivating. More terrifying. But all that inverts today. Because today, Kestra is going to buy a new mother. She’s taken the day off work. She’s arrayed her pillows. She is primed, ready. But, even so, when her cracked mobile phone rings shrill as a starling, a rip of adrenaline ices her over.  She fumbles… Read More »Remothering

Magnolia

Modesto, California, 1976 Magnolia Mendoza couldn’t catch sleep. She didn’t even try to chase it. It was pointless. Sleep was always a few steps out of her reach. Still, her teacher, Mr. Lynch, had told her more than once, especially when he caught her resting her head on her desk, that she needed to “catch some shut-eye.” From her bed, Magnolia could see the iron arrows on the wood clock above the kitchen sink. The short one pointed to the number two. She had four hours before she had to get up for school, but… Read More »Magnolia

My Heartbreak

Heartbroken.  I lean back against the black velvet seat of my heartbreak, run my fingers across the rosewood dashboard. When I touch the accelerator, my heartbreak whines to life and rolls forward with the dignity of an antique hearse. Most projects fail. My heartbreak’s thin tires unspool the electronic pavement behind us as we roll through checkpoints and portals. We approach the gleaming façade of the Centurion Foundation. My heartbreak snarls and leaps forward, now lean and streamlined, clearing the bollards, crashing into the stylish burgundy-velvet-and-chrome landing site. In the queue, the line of supplicants… Read More »My Heartbreak

The Waiting

Richard slid three quarters into the vending machine and weighed his options. There weren’t many. He hadn’t bought anything from one of these machines in a long time. Prices shocked him. $3 for a candy bar? Jeez. The only thing these coins are good for’s gum.  With no other change, he pressed the coin return and slid the money back into his coveralls pocket.  Now what?  The cafeteria wasn’t open. He’d already looked. How can a hospital close its only place to eat? Weren’t people here all the time? And hungry?  He remembered what his… Read More »The Waiting

My Hula Girl

At first, Sturgis liked telling Thornton the story. He’d been living at the Pedro Point parking lot with his dog since last winter. The best he’d found since they’d been forced from the lot at Hope Ranch, overlooking the Santa Barbara coast. This lot, too, had a view of the ocean, though mostly blocked by beach cottages that sprinkled the shore. The lot had everything else: the smell of salt air, the sound of surf, and San Pedro Valley creek that spilled into the ocean at the south end of Linda Mar Beach. In the… Read More »My Hula Girl

Shikata ga nai

In 1934, the snow-covered Sierras peeking over a brown rampart of foothills looked close enough to touch. Our strawberry fields shimmered in the summer heat. Grape trellises shaded tongue-in-groove walls, but the little yellow house my father built felt stifling in the summer. We’d eat a lunch of okazu (vegetables from our garden, mixed with a small amount of meat) and rice. Then I would rest beside Papa on a wooden platform in the shade of our walnut tree.  One hot day, my younger brother Yukio sauntered by and said, “I sure would like to… Read More »Shikata ga nai

The Surface of Mars

It’s a world full of holes, Mick thinks—as though a child has taken the scissors to it. Real, but full of dark spots. Shit happens in such indefinite terrain. He doffs the 3-D glasses and the surface of Mars flattens out into picture. Three hours before the press conference. He can feel his throat beginning to clog over.  Pushing back in his chair, he rubs his eyes and studies the rover. A converted dune buggy with solar panels on its back, it is marooned a couple of million miles away. Errored-out, it has refused a… Read More »The Surface of Mars

Mother Protector

P9 looked across the glen planted in golden grain and past the hillside with bean poles in neat rows to the path over the ridge where the Northern Group would come. The soil was less fertile than they had hoped, its nutrients locked in towering trees that now lay in cabin and terrace walls. Planetfall robots had been forced to clear more land for food, so the island was dotted with gardens clinging to hillsides. Even after a second wave of landing craft brought the reserve fuel cells, they were short of power. One by… Read More »Mother Protector

The Soul Takers

“What to do with the body?” “What do you mean?” said the first God’s servant, “What do we do with the body anyway?”  “I mean, she looks pretty. I hate leaving her like this,” said the second God’s servant. “Why does it matter? Our job is to take the soul. Not the body. Do you have the soul in your box?” said the first God’s servant. “Yes, I do. But why her?” “Yesterday, we took a one-year-old boy’s soul. You didn’t ask any questions.” The second God’s servant bit his lip. “Yes, but look at… Read More »The Soul Takers