Sebastian Malloy – Ad Victoriam!

Zombie Chickens and Poultrygeists

Timothy Hutton Popsicles

Perpetual Drama Machine

Panic Buying

Cinnamon

Curated From the Dusty Archives

Twenty Year Storm

The rain is pouring outside, Biblical and a little unsettling. It pounds against the window of Viola’s attic, and the window rattles in its frame against the wind that whips down from the atmospheric river currently pummeling the west coast. “Well,” Viola says. “Guess we aren’t going out on the...

Ghost From the Archives

Headphone Girl

“I’m setting fire to my Twitter,” Viola says. “It’s too much of a fucking mess. That whole place is imploding so hard that it’s going to suck into itself and black hole the entire thing into another dimension.” We are sitting on the roof of her house, just outside her...

Ghost From the Archives

A Dead Man’s Gum

“So,” Viola says. “You know those carnival rides with the swings? The ones that spin and spin and raise up, and you’re going forty miles an hour in a stomach-churning circle that’s supposed to be fun, but really just make you want to vomit on everyone that’s standing down on...

Ghost From the Archives

The Immediate Past

Zombie Chickens and Poultrygeists

A close-up of blueish chicken feet on a wooden floor.

Rivi and I are sitting on the porch at Boone and Tina’s new house, where they have given Rivi a temporary (or permanent, because who can really say) room in which to live. I have been over helping them to unpack, which has mainly consisted of carrying boxes up a flight or two of stairs, or down into the basement. I have been reminded just how much I hate moving, but I do it without complaint. I’m just happy to have my friends close by again. “I haven’t seen any ghosts in the house yet,” Rivi says. “I’m very disappointed.”…

Timothy Hutton Popsicles

What’s the temperature, Kenneth? Rivi texts me. 12 degrees right now, I text back. With a wind chill of -11. Her typing indicator winks an ellipses at me for what feels like thirty seconds, then pauses, then goes again for another thirty. Finally, her message pops up on the screen: Fuck. Still looking forward to moving? I ask. I am going to die, she says. You won’t die. You’ll just have to get a good jacket. And gloves. And a hat. And a scarf. And long underwear. I’ll be dead and frozen in a block of ice like Encino Man. Jesus, Rivi.…

Perpetual Drama Machine

“The power’s out,” Rivi says, on the other end of the phone line. “My madness is beginning to set in.” “Your madness set in years ago,” I say. “That ship has sailed, hit an iceberg, sunk, and was swallowed by a sea monster way before today.” “Don’t make fun of me,” she says. “I’m a delicate flower right now.” “I apologize. Sincerely. With much sorriness. So much of it. Maybe you should call the electric company while your phone still has a charge, instead of wasting it talking to me.” “You’re the one who lives in the woods, Sebastian,” Rivi…

Panic Buying

My phone buzzes with a call while Hunter and I are in Grossett’s General Store, grabbing cheese sticks and pizza slices. I pull it out of my pocket and see that it’s Tina, in another time zone from us, three hours behind. “Hey,” I say, answering the call. “How’s tricks on the left coast?” “Tricks are pretty good,” she says. “Our offer on the house was accepted, so it’s just getting paperwork signed now, in blood most likely.” “Holy shit.” I turn the phone away from my mouth and say to Hunter, “They got the house.” “Nice!” Hunter says. “Tell…

Cinnamon

There is a letter from Viola in the mailbox this morning, amongst the junk and the bills. It is too cold outside to read it at the top of the driveway, so I wait until I am settled in near the pellet stove. Dear Sebastian, I picked up Boone and the bunch at the airport, and did you break them? They won’t stop talking about ice and snow and temperatures low enough to shatter teeth and bone. What arctic hell are you living in? Don’t answer, it’s rhetorical. I am including a few poems for you in the bottom of…

New Year’s Resolutions

“I should have learned how to ice skate at some point,” Rivi says. “I’m sure I would have been a graceful gazelle on them.” “Plenty of ice gazelles in Maine,” I say. “You have to watch out for them when you’re driving at night. Totally wreck your car if you hit one.” We are standing out on the ice of a pond near the house where Hunter and I live, watching some people in the distance ice fishing. The pond is big, what I would have called a lake in the days before I moved here, when I didn’t know…

Black-Eyed Peas

“Happy New Year,” Viola says from the other end of the phone line. “I thought about calling you at midnight, but I figured you’d be asleep.” “Midnight my time, or yours?” I ask. Viola is in San Francisco, on the other side of the country from me. “Oh, mine, definitely.” “Yeah, my ringer is definitely off at three in the morning.” “I figured,” she says. “Thought that as long as I got you on the first day of the year, that was an acceptable alternative.” “Well, I appreciate the call either way,” I say. “It’s the least I could do,…

The Donner Party

A snowy white landscape with a solitary leafless tree against a white sky

“What do you do around here for fun?” Rivi asks. “Sitting on the porch in Adirondacks during a snowstorm isn’t your idea of fun?” I say. “I mean, it’s nice,” she says, “but it’s not really exciting.” “You don’t move here for excitement,” Tina says. “You move here for the quiet.” “And the coyotes,” Hunter adds. “And the stars,” Boone says. “I noticed that last night.” I nod. “Yeah, you haven’t seen a night sky until you live where there are no streetlights. You should have been here during some of the auroras. That was some pretty impressive nature, I…