The Brooklyn Rail
Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture
JUNE 2009
Fiction
READ THE SNOW
by Terese SvobodaFiction
It tastes like this, he says, try it. He swallows more hotel pool water.
Three Stories
by Oona HaasFiction
I wasn’t bothered by the strangers who were carving hieroglyphics into my carpet with their cigarettes. My two social circles were mixing swimmingly and that was all that mattered.
You Are Where I Am Not
by Andrew FarkasFiction
I am not a real person. I am only words on paper. A narrator. A narrator of the first person variety. An invention. A fake. Or, if you prefer, an illusion.
Identity Theft
by Andrew FarkasFiction
While you read this your identity is being stolen, has been stolen. Before you were confident in who you were: you were yourself; before you were confident in who others were: they were themselves. You could not be them; they could not be you. Or so you thought until now when, you find, someone has broken the rules.
FROM A SUBARU FORESTER (novel fragment)
by Meredith BrosnanFiction
My new best friend had flown to Germany. Once again, the lure of the cash-stuffed envelope had proved irresistible.
Reruns Rezoomed: A Serial Novel
by Jonathan BaumbachFiction
All else failing, Jack drives to Maine in the hope of separating Molly from her kidnappers. En route, he is latched onto by a beautiful, predatory extra-terrestial named Mary who wants him to father her child. An auto accident in which Mary is nearly killed causes an apparent change of heart in Jack’s seeming heartless companion.
Tragic Strip
by T. MotleyFiction
The Inspiration That Made a Sculpture Garden Out of "The Insult That Made a Man Out of 'Mac'."
Asalto Navideño
by Forrest HyltonFiction
Every year people die, get crippled, or suffer deformities at Christmas. This year alone the cops nabbed twenty-seven tons of contraband fireworks, and more than three hundred people burned to death from those that got through. Mostly kids.
Identity Crisis
by Forrest HyltonFiction
Ramón Antonio Jaramillo looked through Estrecho’s cemeteries, but had yet to find his grave. Until he did, he couldn’t prove that he didn’t die on Christmas Eve eleven years before.
Contours: An excerpt from Vanishing Acts: A Tragedy
by Forrest HyltonFiction
Flapping his arms in widening, counter-clockwise circles, Richard Melville finds he can fly. It isn’t really flying, though, more like some suspended animation catapult.
