Sebastian Malloy – Page 4

Zombie Chickens and Poultrygeists

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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

Ghost From the Archives

A Dead Man’s Gum

Ghost From the Archives

The Immediate Past

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 the ground in line to ride the thing next?” “Oh sure,” I say. “I know what you’re talking about.” “So that’s the thing my Uncle Harry died on.” “Well, shit,” I say. She nods. “Shit indeed. Chains broke on it when he was up in the air. Seatbelt stayed buckled…

Alain Delon and la Dépression Française

It’s snowing as Rivi and I walk along the path beside the creek. She has been staying with us for a week, and has spent most of the time in the guest room with the door shut. Hibernating, she calls it. Hiding, I tell her. Either way, I’m glad that she’s out today, if not exactly in public, at least out with me. We don’t speak as we walk, and the only sounds are the trickling of the water in the creek as it splashes over the rocks and our shoes on the gravel path. There is a silence that…

Salt Lake Matador

A matador with a red cape facing off against an angry bull

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and see that it’s a FaceTime call coming through: Rivi. I swipe to accept it. “Rivi,” I say. “Sebastian.” The image is dark except for a sliver of blue, enough to dimly illuminate the right side of Rivi’s face, and a bit of a wall behind her. “Where are you?” I ask. “Salt Lake,” she says. “Somewhere around there, I guess. Murder motel on the wrong side of the tracks. Actually, all of it’s on the wrong side of the tracks here.” “What are you doing in Salt Lake? And…

Headphone Girl

Black headphones against a dark background

“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 attic window, in a place most people would consider dangerous. We are not most people. It’s cold out, and gray, and an icy wind is blowing, but there is still a plague going on, even if most of the world is pretending that there isn’t. Up here, we can take…

Antediluvian Banker’s Boxes

“I used to write poetry,” Viola tells me. “A million years ago, before I got old and fossilized.” “You aren’t old,” I say. “You’re just a baby.” “I’m the same age as you, Bastian. We are antediluvian.” We are in the back yard of her house, seated in wrought iron chairs around the matching iron table. We are not masked in this time of plague, which is fine. The both of us are vaccinated, and we do not go anywhere, do anything. This is the world now. We make do as best we can. “I have a banker’s box in…

Rocket Man

Plans In the Fading Light

“Sit on the end of the bed,” I say. “Hands in your lap.” Tina does as I ask, putting her hands together, letting them fall slightly into the space between her thighs. She is wearing an old cardigan, a whisper of blue still clinging to the thin fabric. It’s open in the front, revealing to my eye, but I know that when I take the photo, the curves beneath will be lost in the shadows painted on her by the fading evening light. “Don’t move,” I say. I go to her, and with the tip of my finger, I move…

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…