Dwelling on the loneliness inherent in a city such as this when you dream of endless mountains and expanses of blue sky is a recipe for torment.
Occasionally, a flicker of curiosity would urge the pilots to turn their heads and glance out past the sharp metallic casing of their jets to gaze at the distant, inland desert. They could barely recognise anything less conspicuous than the many moun...
One man’s fight is another man’s freedom.
Secrets are dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer.
Every time I so much as blink you get an erection.
His manhood sways briefly, then comes to a standstill.
Only men with intelligence, confidence and absolutely no empathy at all can progress upstairs.
Maxwell D. Kalist is a receiving teller at a city bank, Orwell and Finch, where he runs an efficient department of twenty two clerks and twelve junior clerks. He carries a leather-bound vade mecum everywhere with him – a handbook of the most widely...
Each day of the week, Kalist indulges himself in a different, secret ritual. On Mondays, he wears cologne. On Tuesdays, he eats meat for lunch. On Wednesdays, he places a bet after work. On Thursdays, he smokes one cigarette (but claims he’s not a ...
Kalist is in his office with the door shut, secretly adding the final touches to his new Brichacek doll; she’s got rosy, plaster cheeks and his nose hairs for pubes, although he thinks he might die them blond to go with her hair.
Kalist likes to listen to the collective voices swell as more individuals in his colony arrive.
Obelmäker. Ridley Obelmäker, to be precise. Fearful. Subservient. Bald. A loner (although married) with addictions to television (mainly imported, uber-English costume dramas), online pornography (his most depressing foray into sexual cyberspace in...
Obelmäker is a deeply fearful person and terribly indecisive. Even when he makes a choice, it’s usually bad.
Dawn cackles as she guides me through the all-glass porch. Thinner, paler Reina shuffles about behind Dawn, watching as I slip my boots off. Although she tries to hide her hands, her fingers flicker nervously. I place my boots neatly on the floor of ...
For no real reason – well, perhaps because of the seriousness under the trees or Nader’s hair, which was very messy and covered in little grass seeds – Katie began to giggle. She knew it was wrong, yet it was also natural. She covered her mouth...
Bea stared at the pencils as if they were enemies.
Katie began to draw in the secrecy of her room, in anger at first, using her mother’s pencils and whatever paper she could find. Sometimes, she had to steal from Nader’s study to replenish her supplies, but it was worth it. She was nothing but a ...
I suffered my own battles. I suffer still.
It was all changing. All of it. And it was horrible and it was lovely.
Shush – it’s silent time again.
