Stories by Leon de la Garza
From beneath me, under my skin and sheets and bed, comes a whisper of the thing called Rat, but I can’t understand it. Its voice enters my ears like the time I tumbled out of a moving skilift, a loud thwomp, thwomp, thwomp, as I stumble down the snowbanks of St. Moritz. Help, I yelled…
Me desperté sudando y abrí la puerta para dejar correr al viento. El aire entró caliente y me acosté sin sábana esta vez. Gotas de sudor escurrían por mi piel, pero se secaban antes de caer, dejando el residuo pegajoso que plagaba mis noches. A veces me tomaba un vaso de agua con hielo, otras…
The city stirred early, before the hours of the sun, when a dim pink hue colored the sky. Buses new and old traversed the city and its slopes, spewing smog across the streets. Men and women filled them, half asleep still, heading to their jobs downtown. Us kids opened our eyes and breathed in the…
A disembodied hand has killed a woman. John is sitting in his bed, watching the news in disbelief. It happened at a gas station just outside the town. There is video footage on the TV. A giant white hand emerges from the darkness offscreen, floating. It’s the size of a man. The woman cannot see…
I had been standing behind everyone at the funeral. The time was somewhere around 6pm and the bright sun was shining in the faces of the attendees, making me wonder if the sunglasses were serving a purpose this one time. I didn’t want to get near the casket. My sister’s dying face was already etched…
The baby has been crying for days. Has it been a week? Has it been two weeks? In the mountains Jerome never counts the days. When he or Lily are thirsty, he brings water from the well. Hunting is an everyday endeavor. The sun tells the time. The seasons guarantee a motion through the years….
Muffled sounds of explosions and bullets echoed, at times, from the mountains to the north. My side had stopped bleeding and now a coagulated mass of dark, cracked blood had dried on my skin, crinkling with every step I took. I didn’t think the injury was too serious. My left arm had also bled somewhat…
The eye is now upon me. I can feel its gaze, its invisible pricks stinging the skin beneath my mouth. I’ve been biting my lower lip to distract myself from it. I’ve been biting my little finger, too. It itches every now and then as I stare into the growing thing on my bedroom wall,…
“I stepped once, on earth and stone, and I gazed upon immense oceans. Water reflected the light of our star, the sun, in myriad waves. I can vaguely now remember. I can barely form an image in my inner eye. It was blue. It was blue…” “What else?” “The sky. We didn’t have perfect lives….
The time is 1:21 AM. You are walking across a park in your neighborhood. Sleepless nights curse you. Your mind swirls with terrible ideas from half-baked nightmares. You awoke tonight with the unsettling vision of a massive mattress overpowering a fragile old gentleman. He wanted to carry it, but it was too heavy, and now…