Sebastian Malloy – Page 5 – Sebastian Malloy

Articles posted by Sebastian Malloy (Page 5)

Endless December

Tina is asleep on the bed, turned away from the window, the morning light soft around the edges of the motel curtains. She is snoring softly, which I won’t tell her about when she wakes. She likes to pretend that she is a delicate flower. We had gone south for Easter, driving along the coast until we ran out of stamina, and stopping at the first motel with a vacancy. Tina had fallen asleep before I’d gotten out of the shower, sprawled on her stomach across the top of the bed nearest the window. I’d covered her with a spare…

The Devil’s Work

I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. At some point while I’ve been out, someone—Sullivan?—has put a small table beside the cot, and on this table he has put a cup of water and three spotted bananas. I reach out for the cup and drink the water in one fast swallow, leaving the bananas for now. The light is dim, and it’s coming from a small lamp on a shelf behind me. He called this place a storeroom, and that’s definitely what it looks like. A few metal shelves along the walls, some empty boxes in the corners. I…

Typhoid Magpie

From her bedroom, Rivi brings me a copy of a used book she’s picked up earlier in the day: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. “I found it at Green Apple,” she says. “It was mis-shelved in the poetry section.” I turn the book over and look at the back cover. “I think I’ve read this,” I say. “It sounds familiar.” “Doesn’t matter,” she says. She takes the book back from me and flips through the pages. Mid-way through, she stops, and I see that there’s something stuck between the pages of the book. It’s a photograph,…

Pancakes and Plans of Attack

Olivia’s apartment is empty. “You’re not her mom,” Tina says. “She doesn’t have to tell you when she leaves town.” “I know,” I say. I feel weird standing in Olivia’s living room, afraid to touch anything, like I’m intruding on a crime scene. This concern for her is completely irrational, but after the idea that she’s connected to the ghostly photo Rivi took in her bedroom, it’s something that I’m unable to shake free from my mind. “Did you try calling her?” Tina asks. “Yeah. And texts.” “This is why life was better before cell phones,” she says. “If you…

Deeper Into the Ever

Wake up. A voice, not mine. In my dream, this dream of snow and ice and cold? Wake up. Not a dream. “Wake up,” the voice says, and so I do, letting my head break through the surface of my sleep, just barely, just enough. It is a struggle to open my eyes, and so I give up and leave them shut. “Take your time,” the voice—a man’s voice—tells me, and I couldn’t argue if I wanted to. I’ve never been so exhausted before. My every bone aches, every breath feels like fire in my lungs. “…water…” I croak, not…

The Secret Architectures of Spiders

Hannah is sucking on a Blow Pop as we drive. She is scrolling through my iPhone, looking at my music. “Don’t you have anything from this century in here?” she asks. “Don’t give me any grief,” I say. “You’re the same age I am.” “Maybe, but my musical education didn’t stop in 1987.” She finally picks something, and The Boomtown Rats start playing from the car speakers. “I do listen to new music, you know,” I say. “It’s just new music that sounds like old music.” The road is all curves here, in the hills along the California and Nevada…

An Unsettled Cloudiness

“What am I looking at?” Tina asks. “Look closer,” Rivi says. We are all sitting at my kitchen table. Tina peers at the screen on the back of Rivi’s camera, staring at the picture there, a photo of Rivi’s bedroom from yesterday at three in the morning. “I don’t see anything,” Tina says. Rivi gets up from her chair and comes around behind Tina. She points her finger at a spot on the screen, and I know what it is she’s looking at: a blur in the flash-blown photo, a smear in the air, hovering directly over the foot of…

Whiteout

I am in the falling snow. Behind me, the door in the shed hangs open, and I can see the workbench, and the cans of paint on the floor, and the dusty window in the wall. Through the glass, the sun shines brightly, and the sky is cloudless and blue. On this side of the threshold, the snow drops from heavy gray clouds, falling onto my head and shoulders. It spills through the open doorway, and makes a small ridge just inside the shed. A mist forms along the door’s frame, where the cold air from here slides against the…

At the Edge of the Continent

“I should take a trip,” Hannah is saying. “Someplace far away. Darjeeling, maybe. Someplace where the air is spicy.” We are walking outside the zoo, and the air is not spicy here. It smells of eucalyptus and salt air. “I want to be in one of those hotels that you see in the movies,” she continues. “Old wood on the walls and a balcony overlooking a marketplace.” “How about Fresno?” I ask. “Fresno is exotic.” “Fresno is an armpit,” she says. “Don’t be a putz.” She has work this morning, and so we are here walking in the dawn, the…

The Blood and the Smoke

“There’s a ghost living in my apartment,” Rivi says. “I woke up last night and she was in bed with me.” We are having lunch in Chinatown, dumplings and roasted duck. Tina was supposed to join us, but she texted us to say she was on a mission and wouldn’t make it. She didn’t say what her mission was. “She was curled up like a dog on my feet,” Rivi continues. “She had smoke where her eyes were supposed to be.” “You were having a dream,” I say. I pick up a dumpling with my chopsticks and take a bite…