Stories by Leon de la Garza
Start by answering your ringing phone. It’s the police. Panic for the shortest instant before remembering you haven’t left your house in weeks. It’s not illegal to stay at home, is it? Think hard. Feel a shiver climb half-way up your back and listen to the phone. Your mom is dead. Motherfucker. She died this…
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…
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…
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…
In the outskirts of a large city, beneath the glow of a white moon, the cool wind whistled through a crack in Ean’s window. He opened his eyes and watched the moonlight on his floor, making a grid of four squares as it passed through. There was a knocking, too, just outside, in the woods,…
In the dense atmosphere of Venus, beneath a bronze sky, on a floating fortress left behind from the wars of a distant past, a lone man walked towards his destination. He crossed the hallways speaking quietly to himself, leaving behind a lingering echo. “It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right.” He had been…
The end It was the 28th century. People around the world screamed, some in joy and some in anger, as the news spread that the ‘Global Transhuman Initiative’ had been approved. Protesters poured into the streets chanting for the sanctity of the human body, cutting themselves, letting their pure blood soak the streets. Riots broke…
Esto pasó hace muchos años. No era ninguna fecha especial. Bueno, en aquel entonces no me pareció nada fuera de lo normal, pero, en retrospectiva, supongo que sí lo fue. Había salido de mi casa para visitar a mi hermano. Él vivía a unas dos horas, allá donde según las cosas eran mejores… según. Ya…