By J.M. Lasley Editor’s warning: assault, self-harm, mental illness He comes at night, when no one is watching. The soles of his white shoes squeak on the shiny white floors, reflecting white lights above, humming and buzzing through night and day. The keys jingle-jangle and the door swings open, screaming. He smells of sweat and [...]
By Luke Walters The little girl’s teal hat is what caught my eye. She and a woman were hugging the bottom of a gravel drainage ditch, hidden from sight—except to me, perched high in my rig. I’d just passed dozens more like them sitting cross-legged along the highway next to green-striped border patrol trucks. Their [...]
By Elizabeth Edelglass “A pride of lions. A pod of whales. A wisdom of wombats.” Henry is rattling off something he learned from the zoo—not the zoo zoo, the online zoo, somewhere, Seattle? Omaha?—Isabel forgot which one today. If it’s Tuesday, there are pandas; if it’s Thursday, dolphins. Pandas are bears, Henry likes to remind [...]
By Sarah Colón Spock scrolls through his Facebook feed in the early hours of the morning. He hasn’t been sleeping well, and the blue light from his phone shining upward reveals dark circles around his eyes. Today, someone is posting a long description of the origins of the virus. “PROOF that it was created by [...]
By D.A. Gray We’d grown thin during the pandemic. I don’t know when it began. Years ago, I think. When we began to look at neighbors with contempt, to walk head down into the house from the car, looking neither left nor right. Something broken in us and we would enter the house and lock [...]
By Gary Priest Fire makes us all believers. There's a unity in fear that allowed science and religion to merge into a rational hysteria that swept us all along on a wave of koala memes and apocalypse FOMO. The eco-inspired crimewave started in the mid 2020s. This was not just shutting down airport runways or [...]
By Phebe Jewell Mama won’t let us leave the house, and MJ is furious. After dinner we form a line at the kitchen sink, Mama on one end, up to her elbows in dishwater, MJ in the middle, rinsing each bowl and plate. I wait at the other end of the line, ready with a [...]
By Wendy Lee “I hope you don’t make me regret finding you a job. Will is a good friend of mine,” Dad says. “I’ll do the best I can,” I say. “Are you still playing bass?” “No, Mom threw it away.” Mom always said bass guitar was not ladylike. She didn’t like the thick, dark [...]
By Yennie Cheung Bullshit. I call bullshit. It is bullshit that your last teacher ever said this, and bullshit that you think I'd ever believe that anyone who has ever assigned an essay in the history of essay-assigning would say that a thesis statement can be anything but a sentence. One sentence. Not a paragraph. [...]
By Caroline Bock Dedicated to Grace Cavalieri Nana makes you learn needle and thread and you stick your fingers—and blood—“Don’t bleed on the cloth,” she says. In your hands is a scrap, an addition to the family’s patchwork quilt. “Stitch. Even stitches,” she insists. A bulb of red appears as you pull the needle through [...]
By Tara Stillions Whitehead ENTER death as sound blackening an already shadowy scene—as a long, hard lament from the HORN of the failed getaway car. Then, as a YOUNG WOMAN. Everything is lost; everyone has lost. At this distance, death is an exquisite execution of convention. A triumph of method acting. Near-perfect cinema. It will [...]
By Christa Miller After ten days of scavenging around the houses in our subdivision, I know it’s unsustainable. Zoe and I had started with the houses next door, then worked our way down the street, but we were walking farther and farther for less and less. I decide to head for Myrtle Beach, but Zoe [...]
By Jie Wang “I was on an underground train. The announcement kept saying ‘Terminal. Terminal,’ in a slow way. Then the train stopped. The man in a grey jacket was on the platform. He was the only one there. He looked into the train. He looked around. I felt that he was looking for me. [...]
By H. A. Eugene Greetings HTW gang! First off I want to say thanks to Gabe, Mack, and your producer, the lovely Vicky! I am a fan of the podcast and have been a member of the How's That Work? gang for almost longer than I can remember! As proof, I submit to you this [...]
By Tara Campbell All the President's Mendacity How to Screw Allies and Idolize Dictators Where’s My African-American?: the Great Picture Puzzle Book Foreign Policy for Goddamn Idiots Windmill Noise-Cancer is Not a Thing, and Other Actual Facts The Man, the Myth, the Legendary Shitstorm: An “Illegitimate” Biography What the Fuck? Asking for a Nation No, [...]
