Sebastian Malloy – Page 3

Every Cat’s Got a Bit of an Asshole in Him

Every Cat’s Got a Bit of an Asshole in Him

The library in Winchester is open four days a week, and today is one of those days. We have come to escape the heat, and because we haven’t had the chance to visit the library yet, which is a crime in a civilized world. The building is small, no larger...

Popeye as a Role Model

We are out of butter and short on cream, so Hunter and I decide that a trip to the general store in town is in order. It’s too far to walk, but a half hour drive isn’t too bad, and there is still enough of the city people in us...

What’s In Your Head

In the mailbox this morning, we find an envelope addressed to us from our realtor, the one who had helped us to get this house in the woods in which we now live. Inside this envelope is a second, smaller envelope, like one that would come with a bouquet of...

A Postcard to Rivi

Paranormal Tinglies

The clock on my phone reads 1:40am, and I finally give up on trying to sleep and crawl out of bed. I slip into the walk-in closet and get dressed by the glow from my phone before heading downstairs for coffee and breakfast. My mood can not in the slightest...

Things From the Archive

Crime Scenes of Christmas Future

Rivi insists on helping me to unpack, although I try telling her that it isn’t necessary. “Shut up,” she says cheerfully, and starts taking my books from the banker boxes in the living room. “Go do something in the kitchen,” she says. “Make yourself useful.” It’s a change,...

Ghost From the Archives

Paranormal Tinglies

Ghost From the Archives

Every Cat’s Got a Bit of an Asshole in Him

Ghost From the Archives

The Recent Past

The Bones in Her Throat

The rain falls on me, heavy at first, then lighter, then heavier again. I am soaked to the skin, and I am hoping that the backpack I’m wearing is waterproof. I’m afraid to open it to check, and so I leave it on and just keep walking. The further I go along the street, the fewer people I see, the fewer parked cars, the fewer buildings. Soon the sidewalk runs out as well, replaced with a grassy shoulder along the road, and there is nothing to either side of me except fields speckled with the occasional group of oaks, and…

A Chess Game of Cards

I am meeting Suzi at the Palace of Fine Arts, beneath the giant dome on the edge of the pond. The crowd is much larger than I’d been expecting, a thick herd of people milling about, blocking my way, nearly tripping over one another as they walk the grounds. I’d forgotten it is Memorial Day weekend, which explains why I’d had to park in Timbuktu and walk a million miles to get here. My phone buzzes, and I see that it’s Suzi calling me. “Hello,” I say, answering it. “Hi,” she says. “I’m here. I have no idea where…

The Welcomed Rising Tide

“New shoes,” Tina says, turning her feet this way and that, the cherry red leather glowing in the sunlight coming through her bedroom window. “Very red,” I say. I am in her bed, the sheet gathered around my waist. “Like how much more red can they be?” “The answer is none,” she says, putting a twist on the obligatory Spinal Tap joke. “None more red.” “Are you going to put any other clothes on? Or just go out in nothing but shoes?” “It’s San Francisco,” she says. “Rules don’t apply here.” I’ve seen Tina undressed many times before in our…

The Belly of the Storm

It isn’t raining outside Sullivan’s shop, but it looks as though it had been until only a few moments before. The blacktop dimly reflects the light which fell through the heavy dark clouds above, and the narrow sidewalk is layered in a thin sheet of water which still seems to ripple from the drops which had been crashing against it. Great trees line the road, tall and black against the gray sky, and their leaves hang heavy with moisture. Sullivan’s shop is the only building I can see on the street. Everything else in either direction is only trees, stretching…

Perpetual Smug

“In my dream,” Rivi says, “I’m standing outside a blue house at the top of a big hill. There’s a black cat in the yard, and I try to walk around it to look at its face, but no matter where I’m standing, it’s always looking away from me.” We are laying in her bed, with dozens of photographs spread out around us. She has been looking through photo boxes, pulling out some, transferring others from one box to another. I have seen myself in many of them, and more full of faces I don’t know. “I can see my…

A Whispered Insistence

“Tell me,” Tina says. She is in the easy chair in my living room, sitting sideways with one foot on the floor and the other propped up on the arm of the chair. Her dress rides high and her bare legs glow yellow in the light of the streetlamp outside my apartment. The light flickers off and then on again, the wiring faulty, strobing her once, then twice, then being steady once more. “Tell you what?” I ask. “About you and Olivia,” she says. “There’s nothing to tell,” I say. A lie. She takes the hem of her dress between…

A Library of One

“What is this place?” I ask. “What do you do here?” Instead of answering, Sullivan turns away from me, there on the other side of the glass counter, and reaches for an item on the shelf behind him. He sets it down between us and folds his arms, not speaking. It’s an old wooden fishing lure, an eyelet at the top where the line would be tied, and a barbed hook at the bottom. “Is that for me?” I don’t pick it up. I’m afraid to touch it. “No,” he says. “It’s not yours.” “Whose it it?” “A madwoman,” he…

Cultural Archaeology

Rivi and I are waiting for the BART to arrive. The low hum of distant trains hovers in the air of the underground station like the thrum of surf against the shore. Rivi pokes at the back of my neck with her fingernail. “You got sunburned,” she says. “Is it bad?” I ask. “Not really. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it’s bad, sure. Sunburn is just one step away from skin cancer.” She pokes me again. “Okay,” I say. “Is it cancer?” “Nah,” she says. “It’s just a sunburn.” We had spent the afternoon at Amoeba in…