Double Barrel
The TWO TEENAGERS head quickly through an empty field, dragging SUITCASES behind them. Ahead stands an abandoned BARN. Entering the barn, they take a moment to adjust to the dark, and then they see a MAN standing there in front of them. BY MATTHEW ROSS FENNELL
Monday, February 11, 2013A Collective Hallucination
Lately, Pierre has felt his brain expanding. Growing lighter, as if swollen with air. This morning, a thrust against the roof of his skull. Last night, a pressure in his jaw. Before long, he suspects, the whole machine will burst. Words will trickle through his ears, scamper back into the world. BY LINDSAY STERN
Martin
Martin Haversham lived in Stamford, Connecticut (or rather Stanwich) and had not stopped living there since the day he was born. He was the third of three brothers, each one progressively less impressive than the last. BY MATTHEW ROSS FENNELL
53rd and 5th
‘Bet they can’t bottle up breezes like this on your planet, spaceman. The whole system, it’s really just a, a bunch of pistons and tubes for making these blasts of air. In the fifties daddy had nuclear holocaust on the brain and some idealists up at the Department of Infrastructure made sure that their shiny new bunkers and transport systems were narrow so the trains could push air in front of them. BY ANDREW ZOLOT
The Better of the Bitter
In the wide divided light of a rented room, I am standing and will be drinking a cocktail. When your country is at war with itself, when one side would sooner claim authority than responsibility for its people and the other would claim itself only free, when that is what you suck out of your television in the mornings before school, you delight in the promising burn of tonight’s aperitif. In its stiffness, stability, soundness. BY M.M. LOCKER