The girl playing badminton is the one. But I don’t want to believe it. It is because her legs are so shapely and long and, in their stunning whiteness, betray a winter spent indoors. Her ankles are well-sculpted, her knees pinkly glowing, and there is something about her slender wrists that suggests the modest charms of aristocracy. I don’t care much about the rest of her. It is the shape of her shadow, the way she stands there bored in the shade of the cruise ship’s upper decks in a green skirt with white tennis socks pulled past her shins; I watch her lean over as she traces something with the edge of her racket, some invisible word or shape in the air. She is daydreaming and the picture she makes in the middle of the ocean liner is one of absolute splendor. I hear the sound of her laughter as the shuttlecock flies her way, her laugh which is not the kind of haughty one you’d expect from a girl who looks the way she does, and suddenly I’ve lost my nerve . . .
Read part six of DARK DAYS IN PORT-AU-PRINCE, our Haiti-set noir short story that was written by Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2: The Classics contributors in the style of an exquisite corpse, a collaborative writing process in which each author builds a story based upon what his or her predecessors have provided. Haiti Noir 2: The Classics contributor Roxane Gay returns to finish this haunting short story.
Mondays Are Murder features brand-new noir fiction modeled after our award-winning Noir Series. Each story is an original one, and each takes place in a distinct location. Our web model for the series has one more restraint: a 750-word limit. Sound like murder? It is. But so are Mondays. This week, Gary Phillips (editor of […]
If he is wearing knives for eyes, if he has dressed for a Day of the Dead parade—three-piece skeleton suit, cummerbund of ribs—his pelvic girdle will look like a Halloween mask.
“The bones,” he’ll complain, make him itch. “Each ulna a tickle.” His mandible might tingle.
He cannot stop scratching, so suggest that he change, but not because he itches—do it for the scratching. Do it for the bones . . .
The dog track was never in our plans for the evening. Scott’s system was for jai alai, not dogs, and tuition for the fall semester was due tomorrow, so he needed to raise it tonight . . .
