Sebastian Malloy – Page 8

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

“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

Constellations of Desire

Hannah plays Iggy Pop through the speakers of her iPhone as we walk down the wooded path, which leads to an overlook by the Golden Gate Bridge. The wheels of traffic buzz like honeybees on the pavement from just out of sight. I glance over at her as we walk, and a gust of wind blows her hair back, revealing the galaxy of freckles there on her cheeks and nose. She mouths the lyrics to “The Passenger,” but I can’t tell if she’s singing quietly to herself or not over the cars and wind. A woman stands smoking at the…

Infinite Greenhouse

Ana is laying on my sofa, looking out the window at the gray afternoon outside. The San Francisco fog envelops the city like a cold and damp blanket, and grows thicker as it rises from the ground and into the air, as though gathering in aspiration of becoming clouds. “We’re building a greenhouse,” she says. “In the back yard.” Ana shares a house near the airport with a woman from Turkey. She and Elif met two years ago while Ana was traveling through Europe, and somewhere in that trip an invitation was extended and accepted. Elif landed at the airport…

A Possible Path

I have decided to go out today. The sun is creeping through the gap between the curtains in my bedroom, carving a bright line across the comforter on the bed. I have been watching it move slowly from the foot of the bed up to the center, and I have told myself that when the light reaches my face, I’ll get up, shower and force myself to go outside. Christopher called my phone yesterday, but I didn’t answer. I haven’t listened to the voicemail. I delete his texts to me, unread. I want to go to the beach today. I…

Measures of Triscuits and Waffles

“I hate that it doesn’t snow here,” Rivi says from the kitchen. “It’s a drought,” I say, laying on the chaise in the living room. “It doesn’t snow anywhere anymore.” It is ungodly early, somewhere around seven in the morning, and I haven’t slept all night. Rivi had appeared on my doorstep about nine the evening before, full of too much energy, and with no one to expend it on besides me. The day is going to be a long one. “It’s December. There should be at least a foot on the ground,” she says. “You have to go east…

The Subtle Persistence of Gravity

Tina sits on the floor of the hotel room, hair damp from the shower, dressed but in bare feet still. Our only plan is to take our cameras and go walking, and that is plan enough for now. “We should have got more pineapple,” she says. She has been eating slices of dried fruit from a plastic bag that we bought at a gas station halfway through our drive. “All this is doing is making me want to eat more of it.” “This is a town, you know,” I say. “I’m sure if we walk far enough, we’ll find a…

Unbearable Big Sur

There has been no point in getting out of bed today, so I haven’t bothered with it. Christopher left four days ago, with very little urging from me, and now I am wrapped in a blanket, listening to the empty sound of the apartment, trying not to think about what to do next. The key and Japanese coin rest on the nightstand. They are also things I am trying not to think about, but I am doing a poor job of it. I called in sick to work this morning, and with the holiday weekend, that means I’ve had five…

Cybersex Monday

“The best role Jude Law ever played was in A.I.,” Rivi says. “He played a walking sex doll,” I point out. “Exactly,” she says. “You need a boyfriend, Rivi.” “I need a Jude Law,” she says. She logs into her phone and calls up her browser. “Let’s see what Amazon’s got on sale…” “Keep the wheels of capitalism turning,” I say. “Just doing my part, darling.”

The Familiar Geographies of Wishful Thoughts

Tina’s apartment is old and ill-kept. The wind blows in through cracks beneath doors and windows, and bits of plaster occasionally fall from the ceiling. She has hung an old grey parachute from her bedroom walls to catch the falling pieces, and once a week she gathers the bits and tosses them from her window into the concrete patio that is her back yard. I have told her before that she needs to find a new place to live, but the rent is low, and she says she appreciates the feeling of decay that drifts through the air of the…