Every woman in your family can unhinge her jaw and swallow ten times her body weight. By this estimate, swallowing a man whole is by no means an impossible task. Like this, your sister says, followed by the unlatching, the elongating, the confused screaming. The silence. His name was…Josh? No, James, your sister corrects. She is twice her normal size, towering above you, her mouth still hanging open, and her voice an octave lower than usual, as if James’ throat has become caught in hers. Wind whips across the football field; the creak of metal bleachers and the drone of ..read more

Purl rooted through the trash around his door for something to put on his head—a pot or a bucket, something to protect himself from the ashes falling out of the sky. There was a cardboard box that had blown over from somewhere. It was rippled from an earlier damping but had dried crisp and held its shape. He knocked it on the step to dislodge any spiders and put it on his head, then set off to fetch Kelpie from the school. Purl held his breath when he walked past the street corners where the Bullabulla boys stood smoking pipes ..read more

Comfortable conversation and a crackling fireplace greeted Penelope as she entered the Dancing Badger. The Survivors of Transformation support group sat in a circle around a coarse rug—the shabby inn’s only bit of decor beyond a couple torches mounted to bare stone walls. Penelope eyed the three chairs that remained free, unsure where to sit. Eight fire-lit faces turned to her as she stepped inside. “Welcome, young lady,” said a short, twitchy man. “We’re about to start.”  As Penelope settled into the seat next to him, the group’s staring drove a cold spike of doubt into her.  “It’s ..read more

I rented a room in the center of Brussels two floors above a butcher’s shop with half-boned carcasses and large hunks of marbled meat on display in the showcase, as in a Soutine painting. On warm days, the pungent stench of offal from the bins in the courtyard at the back would penetrate the entire house. I’d  been a vegetarian for years and it repelled me. That’s why I’d never taken anyone upstairs until I met Océane, a photographer with big sparkling black eyes, small hard breasts, and a penchant for wigs. Océane wasn’t her real name. I gave it ..read more

I walk into the bar after work even though I really don’t want to, and I know it’s not cool for a woman my age to drink alone, but I dread my empty apartment so I slither in and take a seat, grateful for the darkness and the anonymity of middle age, when I see you sitting across from me and I think it must be a dream, no, a goddamn nightmare because even though I know it isn’t possible, there you are, sipping your drink with an amused smirk on your face like twenty-five years hasn’t passed, but how ..read more

Remember when we would lay together on the floor of your basement? What about when we would drink mickeys of vodka and 40s of Molson Dry behind your old middle school, and talk about how badly we wanted to move in together?  Last night, I drank behind the old middle school, just like old times. You weren’t there. It’s funny how sixteen-year-olds drinking at a playground is cool (to them), but a solo thirty-year-old drinking at a playground makes dog walkers uncomfortable and old white ladies stand out on their porch and call the HOA. I went to your house ..read more

The only thing I could find to put my husband’s head in was an Amazon shipping box. The lid didn’t quite close, so I’d need to use tape. Perhaps it wasn’t the most appropriate vessel for carrying a human head, but at least it would be discreetmy first instinct had been Tupperware. My husband’s head traveled, in the box, on the passenger seat all the way to Mirabelle’s house. “Is he dead?”  That was the first thing Mirabelle asked after the flaps were un-flapped. She always said the first thing that came to mind. Most people would assume a head ..read more

Last night, we broke the TV in our room in the Grand Hyatt. We also broke a bottle of Grey Goose over the nightstand. You touched yourself while I watched, and I drank until I threw up and passed out in the bathroom. I woke up with glass in my leg like shrapnel and you woke half-naked on the window bench, curtains wide open. We wonder how much the city saw of us.  The hotel lounge offers coffee with Kahlua after breakfast and we enjoy the expected day-drunkenness of Midtown that makes middle-aged women at brunch laugh at nothing and ..read more

We held a meeting in the bathroom, where there were no heating vents to carry our voices throughout the house like ghosts. A unanimous vote to do the chores because how would Mom do them? After her right arm disappeared, which wasn’t a big deal because she was a lefty, one of her legs vanished.  She still looked like a movie star with bright red lipstick and blue eyeshadow and milky pale skin. When her arm left, we thought it was a fluke, and it would eventually return. Maybe it got tired of all the chores or went to New ..read more

She was born into a family of modest income, and learned from the silence in the wake of words. She developed a demure disposition that encouraged her to consider the opinions of others before jumping to judgments of her own. Her golden pigtails and ruby cheeks were poked and prodded by family and strangers alike, as if her youth was an elixir that would cure their woes. Her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Leroy Jeffries, fostered this behavior with “Go hug Uncle Simon” and “Give your Aunt Frieda a kiss.” The sloppy smooches and too-tight squeezes crept past the boundaries of ..read more