Litmus Collective

Cardboard People in a Diorama World

We are flattened, drained of our color, paper-thick and outlined, nothing but cardboard people in…

It’s Possible You’ve Misread This Story

A conversation.

How was the week?

It was bullshit. How was the future?

I’m not sure you’re using the right tense there.

Serpents

We found Shem Lester in a squat concrete bunker of a bar called Le Fiesta in the wilds just outside of Yuma between Growler and Mohawk. The wind roasted everything it touched. Richard Weeks had brass knuckles in his back pocket. I’d left my gravity knife in the Buick.

One South, Adult Psychiatric

I guess I lost my faith in friendship and music when I was admitted for the third time in a month. Nobody wanted to room with me anymore, not even William B., toothless at thirty, his breath a dragon’s roar of green sewer gas while he giggled in your face.

Rodeo Night

She’d been teaching me how to get high and screw in her truck behind the Norco rodeo park, empty and dark in the offseason at the base of the Needle Vista Hills. Her husband was overseas in the marine corps.

Angel of Death

First it took Harriet. She prayed it would, not Grandma down the hall of their care home. Met her when Grandma moved in, a lively…

So Long, Fontanabama

He had some sort of awful neurological problem that made him tremble and twitch all the time. His real name was Lester Abbott, but he’d introduce himself as Shake and Bake. The ashes would drop off the ends of his long brown More menthol cigarettes every time he brought one up with his…

When We Get There

It was at the laundromat in Washington and the man was wearing old blue jeans and a flannel coat with gray stripes that used to…

Eulogy

Our suitcases sat in the kitchen next to the desk he kept there for no good reason, always scratching up the linoleum when we bumped it going in and out. Two bags stuffed with layers and jackets and socks. I asked if he had the tickets. I was seventeen, pretty new at flying, but Dad wasn’t the kind to think of…