It has been three years.
She knows she is not dying.
She is freeing herself from the confines of being human, from dragging around the weight of this burdensome skeletal mess.
The first time it happened, she was fourteen years old. Afterward, she stood in front of the mirror, unclothed, staring at herself. She was in the small bathroom on the top floor of her parents’ house, the …
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Hear me young women and heed my tale. There were once three sisters. Beautiful. Carefree. Made ugly. Turned into Gorgons who froze men’s souls. Of course, in time, three turned to two, and though my story did not end well, it may still prove instructive for you.
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Where to start a tale that ends so badly?
I never met my father. Some say he was …
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One day, Mercedes Bernal went to work in a three-piece suit, carrying a long umbrella. A big orchid bloomed from her buttonhole; a thin mustache adhered above her lip. She had expected an instant laugh – that would have been the natural reaction back in Mexico. But the whole office fell silent and stared as she strode through the swinging glass doors, hung her blazer …
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Aimee did not intend to stalk her therapist. It happened, as these things do, somewhat naturally. One day she was taking a walk in her neighborhood, that kind of fast-paced foot hitting pavement boom boom boom sort of walk, when she saw her therapist’s car. It wasn’t like she went out looking for it. But there it was, parked in a driveway, with bumper stickers …
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In Leila’s Balkan country most people cowered in permanent unease. Anxious about the propuh, an ill-meaning air draft apparently possessed of ambiguously mystical but lethal powers, their wet hair after bathing, or sitting on cold stairs because if you did – your bladder would catch the ‘bladder flu’. Or, you could get brain inflammation from that un-dried wet hair and die. Or pneumonia. And die …
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