My story, “The helium’s rise,” is now available at WhiskeyPaper.

“Five-year-old Cornelia has hacked off her hair with pink scissors. Her mother walks in and sees long locks, peach-scented, corn-husk blond, scotch-taped to a doll’s rubber head.

The doll needed hair, Cornelia says, her voice a whispered poem, her scabbed knees cratering the carpet. Who knows why they’re scabbed? The girl is reckless, always running, always falling. The scabs never get a chance to heal.” Continue here.

My novella, “The final accident report filed by National Transportation Safety Board Investigator Maxwell Burns,” ended its run this week over at Novella-T. It was serialized and sent to subscribers in four parts beginning Sept. 1.

“Passenger 1 is not afraid to fly. He is not afraid of anything. When he was twelve years old and his stepfather pressed the barrel of a gun to his temple and told him that he, the stepfather, was not be fucked with, Passenger 1 paused briefly for effect before responding coolly that he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t know why he wasn’t afraid. He’d somehow just always known that there isn’t anything in life he can’t handle, so there is really no reason to fear anything ever, especially not a pudgy repressed asshole like his stepfather.”