Dead Dog's Tale

Nina glided from tree to tree, silent as a stringless kite, invisible to both eye and ear except for the briefest moments she crossed the face of the moon. Her quarry scurried below, a rat among New York City’s dirtiest, frantically seeking refuge from the owl it sensed above but could not locate. The city’s filth, once overwhelming to her senses, had become almost a comfort now—another element to master, like the air she now controlled so intimately. Since her choosing, Nina had dedicated herself to honing her skills. The air was no longer just something she breathed; it was her ally, her weapon. She had learned to take soft, quiet inhales, retaining her breath mindfully, allowing her body to levitate effortlessly, as if weightless. The sensation was liberating but required exact control. One wrong move, one sharp breath, and she would shoot skyward like a balloon released from a child’s grip—untethered, wild. Her exhale had to be even more precise, timed perfectly. Too slow and she w...

Nina stood at the edge of the rooftop, her bare, itchy feet numb against the icy concrete. The wind howled around her, biting at her skin, but her body remained frozen, no longer able to feel the cold. She’d run so far, escaped so much, but here she was again—alone, cornered, staring down into the abyss. Her life had always felt like a series of endless escapes. From the day she was seven, clutching her doll as her mother and father’s car flipped and rolled on that highway in Manila, their screams echoing in her memory. Afterward, the foster homes—each one worse than the last—until she ran from them too, straight into the heart of New York City’s merciless streets. Homeless, forgotten, invisible. She had become adept at blending into the shadows, a ghost among the bustling crowd of people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see her. But ghosts witnessed things, didn’t they? And one night, at a familiar haunt in a filthy alley near the river, she had seen too much. The woman’s face was still etc...

Rain fell in a slow, steady drizzle, a melancholy backdrop to the world outside the frosted window of the tiny apartment. Sixteen-year-old Aputi, her name meaning “snow” in her native Inuktitut, sat curled on the edge of her narrow bed, staring out into the grey Seattle streets below. The city never felt like home, but it had been her cage since her father died, since everything that once held meaning washed away like the tide. Her father, Qimmiq, had been everything to her—a stoic fisherman who never spoke much but who radiated a quiet love that filled their small world. He wasn’t the kind of man to lavish words or displays of affection, but his presence had always made her feel safe, like an anchor in a storm. When the Pacific claimed him, it had been like watching the horizon collapse into itself. Aputi hadn’t seen it happen, but she could imagine the scene too well—his strong hands pulling at the nets, the salt spray on his weathered skin, and then the icy waves closing over him. A...

It was early, that thin light before dawn when the world is still gray and half-formed, and I slipped off the houseboat barefoot and quiet, careful not to wake the others. The air was cool, almost cold, and Lake Tahoe stretched out before me like glass. So still it seemed unnatural, like something in a dream or a world not yet made. The water lay flat and wide beneath the mountains, cradled by those indifferent peaks, high ridges of rock that stood like old sentinels. Watching. Waiting. The islands, rising dark from the water like the backs of sunken beasts, seemed forgotten too, as if this place had been lost for centuries. The whole lake felt that way. Like time itself had grown slow and tired here, a strange land where everything had stopped. I liked it that way. Inside the houseboat, my family was still asleep—Mom and Dad, my aunt and uncle, all my cousins crammed into bunks, dreaming of eggs and bacon, of whatever people dream of who have no hunger for real adventure. But not me. ...

In the quiet, inky blackness of early morning, I awoke with a start. The room was shrouded in darkness, the kind that seemed to swallow up even the faintest hope of light. My young mind, perhaps no older than five or six, instinctively knew the hour. Just past 3 a.m., that liminal time when the world teeters on the edge of something otherworldly. Anxiety bubbled up within me, a nameless fear that I couldn't yet articulate, but it was there, as real as the walls of the ranch-style house in Chino, California, where I lived. I can still trace the layout of that house in my mind, every corner, every shadowed hallway. Even then, I had an intimate knowledge of its contours, perhaps because there were times, just before dawn, when I would find myself in different parts of the house, far from the safety of my bed. The clock ticked toward 5 a.m., the hour when my father would rise, a man of little patience. His wrath was a thing to be avoided at all costs. The thought of flipping on a hall ...