Hierarchy Of Nonsense

In case a client cries during their Reinstatement, the Department’s handbook includes a short paragraph suggesting the immediate steps to take: the first, offer tissues; the second, offer water. In the Eraser’s room, surrounded by dust motes plummeting off the green couch, June finds neither tissues nor water. A second later, it dawns upon June that she does not really know what to do when she sees someone cry. Is she expected to give them a cookie, pat them on the back, tell

Orion Fields met May at a burrito restaurant. No, that is not right. This is not his first time meeting May, Orion recollects, and though the sound of scratching chalkboards marauds him when he tries to ponder over how he met May, a sandcastle of forgotten memories educes the epiphany that he’s known May for a long time. As Orion sees the world through the eyes of his past self with no control over his body, like a small pritchel hole carved into a flaky anvil, he pulses with

Everything reminds Orion Fields of a person he does not remember. The way his backyard’s gate slightly limps to one side, the sound of wet galoshes scratching against marbled floors, the buzz of his electric heater on a cold night – all of it, no matter how strange and bizarre, reminds him of May. His face ruptures into waves of wrinkled creases as he tries hard to bite onto the fuzzy nature of his memories. Where do they go? These lost memories. When he still remembers nothi

“My dad would take me to the beach every Sunday to build sandcastles,” Orion says, puffing on the bowl of ramen in front of him, the broth simmering hot at the touch of his breath. He looks up at June, blocking out the Sun with his left hand, and wrapping the right hand around his neck in a fold inspired by winter scarves. “It sounds silly, but I really enjoyed how sand felt on my skin. I loved playing with the shadows, building complex tunnels through them.” “Now I know you

While according to several city guidelines, June’s neighborhood does legally classify as a ‘residential zone’, anyone daring to venture into its vicinity would agree that this neighborhood is technically a flat, humid swamp where the plastered edges of crudely designed buildings stick out like sore spots. It seems to June that a few draggled architects over the last few years had flanked a cauldron bowl of inch tapes and compasses, chanted vivaciously around it in their fancy

June feels warm, her ears red and incandescent, her palms on the verge of blistering with an impatient innate desire to touch and be touched, to trace the vivid, blue veins popping under the pale contrast of his right chin, to have her fingers pursue the rough edges of his palm, to know why they are roughened, to know every little secret he has to offer and to whisper her own back to him. She wants his head to rest against hers, while she runs her fingers through his brown ha