RIVER STYX ONLINE
FICTION
This is a Photograph of Us
“It is 1987, and we are at a Braves game at Fulton County Stadium on July 4th. In the foreground, Dad squints through large-paned tinted eyeglasses.”
“History of the Miserable Octopus” and Three Other Shorts
“Once, an octopus—many-hearted, hive-brained, boneless, muscular as a cloud—constructed a human form out of cheap materials that he knew would fall apart after eighty years at the most. He floated down into the human body to begin his adventure.”
The Professors: A Novella
“Ours began, like all great love stories, in a critical theory class.”
Octavio’s Story
“The tour guide Octavio has a half-inch brown rectangle of decay between his two front teeth.”
Customer Service
“My grandma Borka referred to one’s other half as an esh, or more precisely iesh, because people in the part of Bulgaria closer to Russia speak in that dialect, softly. Iesh means the second thing in a pair…”
The Animal Cruelty Handbook
“As soon as you see me, net me. Keep me in a cage and jab out my eyes with a pair of golden nail scissors.”
Garden Electricity
“Hand bleeding, he grabs the broken neck of the bottle then tipsily conducts glass shards, cat hair, and spaghetti bits to a pan.”
Clever Girls
“The men filled the hall, reeking and filthy from their journey. Hard sets to their bristled jaws, fists clamped on sword hilts. Muscles bulging. Male power, male presumption.”
An Incomplete Catalog of Disappearance
“The subject of the missing painting is unidentified, though many believe it to be a self-portrait. Although the painting was never recovered, it has been known for years that the painting survived the war and it is not believed lost, but stolen.”
The Stately Old Chemistry Building
“An 1898 photograph from McClellan Hall’s earliest days shows maples, forsythias, and a grove of apple trees flourishing on the quadrangle’s lush natural carpet.”
The Wisewoman Tells a Story About Commerce Before Renouncing Worldly Possessions:
“A rich man wanted to be richer, so he sold stars. How to sell a star? What people desperately want, they choose to believe they can buy.”
Characters
“Tonight, I’m in my gazebo that sits on a spit of land, narrow as a writing brush, that juts into the pond. No typing on screens tonight. My wine cup of white celadon sits on its matching saucer.”
River as Intermezzo
“Leekin ends at the river. The first people, the Catawba Nation, harnessed it with granite weirs.”
The Grain Elevator
“In the elder night when wheat hide their spotty heads below their wings, we climb the grain elevator, scratching up the side of each bin, which contains enough grain, teeming like locusts, to drown us like the bad guys in Witness.”