Apartments are cheaper because they’re smaller and easier to pin down and because the deed has less space in which to hide as they bound about the prairies avoiding the hunt. It’s into these fields that the homes go when they’re released like healed animals back into the wilderness by the builders to become prey… Continue reading House Hunting
The mice started it. It was their insistence on a few hours of mandatory charging at a time at a minimum rather than what they referred to as the piecemeal standard of a bit here, a bit there, some more over coffee or lunch and then the rest after hours and then all at once.… Continue reading Stationery
She’s pushing on like she’d planned, recording on her smartwatch, planning to rate it not hard but at the high end of medium. She’s sweating a little even in the early spring rainforest chill. It’s early. She’s pushing through the light filtered by the canopies that were closing in. The trees gnarling as she continued.… Continue reading Flight Time, pt. 3
They only bury their dead in winter. From spring to fall they keep them cold, refrigerated in their homes beneath the floorboards. They’re exhumed as the first of the snow starts to fall. The village takes the second day of snow off altogether and they head to the graveyards on the edge of the town… Continue reading Snow Angels
Read part one here. It’s always someone’s responsibility and today it’s his because he’s the oldest and he’s built this all up for everyone and he’s paying — well, indirectly — for them all to be here today but there’s no time to get hung up on anything that’s not what’s coming without warning. Every… Continue reading Flight Time, pt. 2
Across algorithmic feeds all over the internet, content short form and long, you can find The North Pole’s “operations” livestreamed to general punters curious from December 1st to December 24th what happens inside Santa’s workshop. It is, of course, all for show. The mechanised manufacture of toys at the scale that satisfying the world’s children requires cannot be contained inside a single gingerbread house no matter how large or authentic (some of the elves take bites from the walls and doors as what seems like proof but comments swirl in more cynical circles that they might just have the well-rehearsed taste for thin MDF).
He had to stop himself swearing because the kids were catching on. “How was I supposed to see that?” “You weren’t,” the crashed into driver said, “but maybe stay this side." The Volvo had bounced off the other car and they were both now shouldered on the side of the motorway. The crashed into driver… Continue reading Indicator
They never otherwise went that high but he was lost and then curious. He found himself at the soft end of an ambient warmth through the air of someone passing through not recently but lately and still up there, somewhere, maybe on the way up, maybe on the way down. He was hungry but that… Continue reading Rook
They were holding hands. “What would we do?” “We’d walk around the cemetery in the spring sun because one of the best days off that I’ve ever had was a day where I just heightened myself up a touch and went for a run around Toowong and I’d like to do that with you too… Continue reading Steakhouse
He’d dreamed a lot about his end as a grey crackling, loud and deliberate. Between them they were sure it was a fire. When the building’s fire alarms went off, preceded by makeshift orange and yellow visions of her own, it was a return to a life of sorts. A fate the colour of smoke.… Continue reading Newfangled
Zac van Manen 