Sebastian Malloy – Page 9

The Donner Party

“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...

Rivi, Destroyer of Worlds

“You should really do something with all this art, Sebastian,” Rivi says. “There’s so much of it.” She has been flipping through my virtual portfolio on my laptop, without asking permission first, of course. She’s more of an “act first, apologize never” sort of person, really. “I am doing something...

The Immediacy of Ancient History

It’s too cold outside for the dress I’m wearing, but I don’t really care. It’s only autumn, and the coldest November in San Francisco is still warmer than the warmest one back east. Goosebumps never killed anyone. I have my shoes in my hand and I am walking the sandy edge of the Pacific Ocean, leaving footprints behind me which are dissolved by the relentless washing of the waves almost as soon as I leave them. The sky is cloudy and dark, but I don’t think anything will come of it. The drought in California is tenacious, and I doubt…

Deleting the Dead

“There’s something remarkably sad about a website that belongs to a person who is dead,” Tina says. Her bare feet are up on the dashboard of my car, the window cracked so that she can periodically ash her cigarette out of it. I don’t let anyone smoke in my car, but Tina is the empress of the passenger seat. Her reality is as she wills it. She has a flower in her hair, some pretty blue thing she had picked from the floral display at the grocery store, snapping it off the stem and putting it behind her ear as…

Donuts of Evil

The light through the bedroom window is bright, horribly bright, and focused through the bent slats of the Venetian blinds like East German spotlights during the Cold War. First thing I do is get new curtains, I think to myself, once I am awake enough to be somewhat coherent. Or at least hang up a sheet. I fumble for my phone on the small table beside the bed, and check the time: up at the crack of noon. Too early to suit my tastes, but seeing as I’m awake already, I decide I might as well get up and have…

Crime Scenes of Christmas Future

Rivi insists on helping me to unpack, although I try telling her that it isn’t necessary. “Shut up,” she says cheerfully, and starts taking my books from the banker boxes in the living room. “Go do something in the kitchen,” she says. “Make yourself useful.” It’s a change, this apartment, but it’s temporary and necessary: one bedroom, kitchen, bath, living room. Space enough for living and for writing, which is all that I am in need of just now. The plan is to stock up on unhealthy boxed meals and caffeinated beverages, adopt a flexible bathing schedule, and…

Black-Eyed Peas

The Donner Party

Rivi, Destroyer of Worlds

A Feral Princess

Surprises

Things From the Archive

Crime Scenes of Christmas Future

Springtime Honey

A Postcard to Rivi

The Immediate Past

The Immediacy of Ancient History

Deleting the Dead

Donuts of Evil

Crime Scenes of Christmas Future