Pretty Things
Virginie Despentes, Trans. Emma Ramadan
"XXX"
Home Archive by category Excerpts (Page 82)
Excerpts
“Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine”
Kevin Wilson
"Gina received a call from Adam, her only child, at 3 a.m., more than two months since she’d last heard from him."
Kismet
Luke Tredget
"The bus to Kilburn is a long time coming, and while waiting Anna looks back and forth between two versions of the Edgware Road, the real and the digital."
This Mournable Body
Tsitsi Dangaremba
"For the first time since you left the hostel, or rather since you left the advertising agency on the pretence of marriage, your heart beats calmly in your chest. After your period of troubles, events are finally conspiring for you and not against you."
Babylon
Yasmina Reza, Trans. Linda Asher
"He’s against a wall, in the street. Standing there in suit and tie. He has ears that stick out, a frightened glance, short white hair. He’s thin, narrow shoulders. He’s holding out a magazine with the word AWAKE on it. The photo caption reads “Jehovah’s Witness—Los Angeles.” The picture dates from 1955. He looked like a little boy."
“Exit Wounds”
Christie Watson
"Margaret didn’t like to make a fuss. But despite the number of blankets she’d wrapped around herself it was still bitterly cold."
The Marvellous Equations of the Dread
Marcia Douglas
"The story goes that my grandfather, Hector, married Winnie, an obeahman’s daughter. Grandpa Hector was a tailor, a quiet man who liked to smoke a little herb now and then down by the river. That’s what Gran-Win told me. She said nobody knew about Hector’s herb except she."
“Little Sister”
Amy Bonnaffons
"This story starts when my parents drop me off at my uncle Jim’s house, on the way to the hospital where my little sister is about to be born. I am six years old."
If You Leave Me
Crystal Hana Kim
"Kyunghwan and I met where the farm fields ended and our refugee village began. I waited until my little brother was asleep, until I could count seven seconds between his uneasy inhales. "
Immigrant, Montana
Amitava Kumar
"I was a new immigrant, eager to shine, and if self-abuse were to be omitted from the reckoning, pure of body and heart."
Metamorphica
Zachary Mason
"Ovid walks at twilight through dry rolling hills. A woman is before him, trailing her hands through the tall grasses which smoke wherever her languid touch falls, blackening and writhing and turning to ash. "
“Book Review”
Valerie Trueblood
"Once I had a lover. None of us said boyfriend or girlfriend the way they do now, like children. We claimed our youth as a final stage, beyond it a void."
Inappropriation
Lexi Freiman
"Set in a verdant pouf of hillside, Leger shines pavlova white against the dirty, eucalyptus green."
Blown
Mark Haskell Smith
"Neal Nathanson thought about drinking his own urine. Isn’t that what you do when you’re out of water? Wasn’t that what the Chilean soccer team did when they crashed into the Andes?"
“Model’s Assistant”
Alissa Nutting
"My best friend, Garla, is a model from somewhere Swedishy; when people try to pin down where she just yells, “Vodka,” or if she’s in a better mood, “Vodka, you know?” which seems like she’s maybe saying she’s Russian, but really she just wants to drink. "
“How to Lose”
Victoria Patterson
"Natalie woke that morning with blood between her thighs and dripping down her legs. Usually she can predict her periods, but her body’s out of whack from the abandoned fertility treatments."
The Mere Wife
Maria Dahvana Headley
"Say it. The beginning and end at once. I'm facedown in a truck bed, getting ready to be dead."
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