9 When it all started, when I started to smoke and why, and why I smoked for twenty years, was it because that others smoked, that during my entire childhood I saw the fuming chimneys of factories, plants, and neighboring buildings, I saw men smoking (women didn’t smoke, because back then it wasn’t proper for […]
FUNGAL DREAM PART 1 2051 Survive. The most important thing is to survive. It’s the morning now, and I need to get up. To push on. To work. To do things. Another day to be endured. – Good morning. It’s six forty-five. Seventeen degrees outside. – Shut up, Anna. – Shall I wake you in
The Crisis of Representation Just a moment before the impact, I realized that I no longer had a face. I writhe in pain, gripping the air in front of me with my hands, terrified to touch the gaping chunks of wet flesh falling through my fingers in a thick red mush. I hold my hands
1. It seemed to many at the theatre that Odin the director had not died of a heart attack. Even though that was the official version. It seemed to many at the theatre that he had died because he chose the wrong Word. As the Bible says, in the beginning was the Word. And
Undinė Radzevičiūtė Read More »
2. The First Chapter Nizhnedvinsk, Northern Russia, 2018 He woke up not from the hum, crash and thunder of the construction crane outside the window, nor from the groans and curses of the hungover neighbour from behind the thin wall. For a few seconds, he couldn’t work out what had woken him, or where
The two-storey red brick house stood in a valley by a small, fast-flowing stream, not far from the water, looking neglected and dead. One might surmise that it had at some time been a water mill because of a ditch with no other discernible purpose had been dug running from the stream in the direction
INGA I. Sunday, 3 November: the last day to visit the cemetery. Inga wakes up late in the afternoon. The hour when light and darkness are the same, but the defeat of light is inevitable, and both opponents know it. The first thing she looks for every time she opens her eyes is a
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White vs. Black Mum was moving about on the other side of the wall. She’s soon going to come in with a piece of paper and a pencil she’s gnawed on and ask when she should take her blue tablet. Hunched over at the table from the worry, she’ll write: 7.00 p.m. and underline
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Paulė and Elžbieta’s Travels Paulė and Elžbieta‘s room in town had been rented out to other people a very long time ago. Perhaps the newcomers had ripped off the green wallpaper with its twisting, intertwining patterns reminding Paulė of headless snakes. She remembered that Elžbieta used to chop wood with a small axe and
That Unspoken Word Chapter One Beyond Three Hills July 10, 1941 “Matilda!” Kazys called out as he pushed open the heavy wooden door and stumbled inside the train station waiting room. He leaned against the wall to steady himself, struggling to catch his breath. “I ran the whole way here,” he uttered after a
