The leaves were turning brown once again. They say the seasons cycle: winter is stasis, when the earth lies dead and still, but autumn is moribund, the down-chop of the scythe, when chlorophyll bleeds from the leaves, when the warm moisture is sucked, shrieking from the air, and only ether is left. Duck the death.…

As Siobhan and I crept up the gravel driveway to Ken Chang’s house, we couldn’t help but notice the multitude of very vocal cats blocking our path. They looked perturbed that a giant metal who-knows-what was accelerating into their territory, so opted to start mewing and hissing loud enough to penetrate the Talib Kweli I…

Thomas tried to punch the number into his smartphone, but his hands were perspiring so badly that a drop of sweat slid down the screen, side-stepped onto the key pad, tip-toed beneath one of the buttons and shorted out the phone. He was not having a good day. Thomas, who traditionally coal-housed two packs of…

  Full “Laptop Trilogy” with additions and alterations Oscar scanned the lines of foot-commuters, their pneumatic legs pistoning them up and down, driving them forward with whooshes and hisses of steam, their geared joints clicking and whirring like subway doors.  Dogs usually had some dog in them, but a purebred bionic Doberman Pincher slinked past…

The Stoop Princess crashed into our living room by slamming her body through the unlatched door. She skidded to a stop on bare feet, her multi-hued dreads continuing with the momentum, flying past her head like rockets until they reached the end of their give and were yanked back into place. “Hey! HEY!” she greeted…

The torn sheet from a real estate catalog floated downwards, flipping its corners on the eddies of air until it drifted onto the frizzy hair of the kid sitting across from me. He didn’t notice it at first, but then snatched it off his head, tore it in half with disdain and deposited it on…