On this particular weekend at the end of March, Cui Peng put on a suit, tied his tie, and started out towards the mansions in the suburbs. He didn't take the main road, but instead took the smaller path at the foot of the Western Hills. The mountainside, still drab at this time of year and covered in lifeless trees, rose up over the freshly green wild grasses giving off their distinctive scent. Cui Peng, however, was in no mood to enjoy this scene, and he carried on walking...
The morning's first call to prayer from the mosque on the corner came in through the screen where I’d left the window cracked and mixed with my phone alarm. I languished in the few moments where I wasn’t yet anybody. Then came the parts of myself, the articulable variables that made up my life. I was halfway through Moby Dick. I worked. I had a job I had to get ready for, and then...
Two weeks after his father killed himself, Paul moved out of his parents’ house. Paul had spent his entire life sleeping in the same bed, staring up at the same water stain on the ceiling, an oblique shape that reminded him of textbook diagrams of a woman’s reproductive organs. He had masturbated in that bed for the first time when he was twelve. He was still masturbating in it at thirty-four. That was the...
