The old woman sat in her leather recliner, the footrest extended, a dinner tray on her lap. By candlelight, she turned the cards over, halfway through a game of Solitaire. Next door, her neighbors wer...
The man behind the divan stood up, the machine pistol quivering in his grasp. There was a flash, Abigail thinking he’d pulled the trigger, the walls of the sitting area lighting up, the snow glinting....
Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve treated our world like it was a hotel room and we were rock stars. But we aren’t rock stars. In the scheme of evolutionary forces, we are a weak, fragile species...
Remember how it’s a right-then-and-there, in-or-out, yes-or-no proposition? I do. Well, this is exactly like that. I need a yes or no right now. And before you answer, I have to be straight with you....
On the minus side, I’d been driving for six straight hours, and I was hungry, tired, and needed to pee. I also needed gas, according to my gauge. Maybe Murray could take care of all my needs. Assuming...
Nearby, another homeless man is standing in the middle of the sidewalk, having a full-volume conversation with nobody. I think, Am I so different? Aren’t we both lost in worlds that, for reasons beyon...
Last year, the morning of the day he died in a nursing home, wasted from age and pneumonia, his father asked Ethan in a raspy voice, You spend time with your son? Much as I can, he’d answered, but his...
It’s the beautiful thing about youth. There’s a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forming out ahead is pure, unlim...
It’s terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches into a new world.
It all points to the fact that my identity isn’t binary. It’s multifaceted. And maybe I can let go of the sting and resentment of the path not taken, because the path not taken isn’t just the inverse...
Isaiah said, I’ll need access to Richter’s phone for one hour. This is his replacement. Does it work? No. It was impossible for Mark to replicate his contact list, apps, texts, call history. Safer pla...
If there are a million ponds out there, with versions of you and me living similar and different lives, there’s none better than right here, right now. I’m more sure of that than anything in the world...
If I wanted to bring you down, David, I could’ve done that months ago. If I wanted you dead, Agent Hassler—you and everyone you love—there is nothing in the world stopping me from making that happen....
I can only smile. When Daniela drinks, three things happen: her native accent begins to bleed through, she becomes belligerently kind, and she tends toward hyperbole. Your father said to me one night—...
I ask, You think you’d ever forget it entirely? Your world? I don’t know. I could see it getting to the point where it didn’t feel real anymore. Because it isn’t. The only thing that’s real in this mo...
He’d been filling up his Suburban—a feat that required a small business loan at current prices—and had missed Shanna’s call.
He growled, Because I could. Because I am their fucking creator, and creations don’t get to question the one who made them. Who gives them breath. And who can, at any second, snatch it all away.
He drops his head, tries to allay the thumping of his heart in the thin air. When he looks up again, the young girl is still there, perhaps six or seven, apparition-pale and just ten feet away, with l...
Greetings. There is a body buried on your property, covered in your blood. The unfortunate young lady’s name is Rita Jones.
Even as those five words cross my mind, I’m not exactly certain what they mean, or how to begin to consider their full weight. So I say it again. I try it on. See how it fits. This is not my world.