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“Hey, Walt! There’s. . . people on the floor!” Walter looked at me as if I was crazy. Of course there were people on the floor. The New York Stock Exchange was bustling, even more lately with the bull markets we’d been having. “No, look! Over there!” I pointed at a small family grouping. “If management finds out we let in some tourists, no more cushy security jobs for you and me.” Walt squinted over at the intruders. “Guess we better get them…
I was in the science museum gift shop. There were lots of toys and things that I couldn’t figure to how they were related to the museum, but it seemed like someone had said, “This is scientific!!” (yes, with all the exclamation points), so they put it on the shelf for $23.95. In the museum itself, there was a huge cross section of a tree. There were little markers, like flags planted by explorers, that showed all the human things…
When I was about ten or eleven years old, I read a book that terrified me. It had a supernatural being that could take people over and leave them as empty husks. My father tried to comfort me by talking about how fears could be irrational. He gave as an example a fear from his childhood. He had been afraid that there was someone hiding behind the couch and that they were going to jump out and beat him with…
I watched that girl, that girl at the airport. She couldn’t keep control of her bags – they kept banging against her legs. She was trying to run, trying to go fast, but the bags were slowing her down. Why’s everyone got to be in a hurry? “There’ll always be another train,” my mama used to say. Because that was back in the days when trains were a thing. Big as a building, loud enough to make your head split…
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I’m feeling queasy, but there’s nothing in my stomach to vomit up. Opening my eyes is disorienting, so I close them again. I open my eyes. Okay, this feels better. I’m in a familiar place. There’s sunlight pouring in through my bedroom curtains, the ones with the border of pale green ferns. I’m going to be all right. Shit. No, I’m not. For some reason, I’m sitting on the floor, and that’s me in my bed, and. . . I’m…
Q: What can you tell me about your body? A: Well, to start with, I should probably say that this is one of the best bodies I’ve had. Human bodies, that is. I really loved being a red-tailed hawk, and I think back fondly about all my friends when I was a seahorse. But I’ve had some pretty shitty human bodies, not all of them, mind you, but yeah, for such a long time, everyone was dying from something awful…
I went to Kaitlyn’s party. I knew that sooner or later, Heather would be there. She likes to barge in and take over. I mean, most of the time, we get along great, but then she feels like she wants all the attention, and I feel like I get shoved back into a corner. Not literally a corner, of course, but you know what I mean. Heather was talking about math class, which nobody was interested in. Nobody else is…
I wrestled the new sewing machine out of its box. It had taken me a long time to choose it. Decisions are always like that for me. There were so many attachments! I had skimmed the part of the brochure where it talked about the attachments, because my old machine didn’t have any, so I figured I wouldn’t use them. Each attachment came in its own little square white paper envelope with the name typewritten on it. I started looking…