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'The Railway Nurse' appears in McSweeney's #18, which you can order here. HERE.
Nelly's paper slideshow "the lake" is forthcoming in Jubilat. You can subscribe to--or buy a single issue of--this beautiful journal HERE.
"They Came" Ducky
I.
They came after me: the aunts and uncles, shaking their fists, shouting. Their voices mixed into one loud, angry gurgle. I ran up the hill on the dirt road. Poison ivy grew in the median, and I tried to keep my feet in single file to avoid going off the path. I heard their feet pounding after me; they were gaining on me. The road wound into the woods at the top of the hill. I kept running even though the road disappeared. I told myself that I would not get lost if I followed the stone wall. I forced my feet down, pushing forward. I started to get a stitch in my side. The aunts and uncles knew about the stone wall, too. I heard them turn at the end of the road to follow me. I pushed against the briars and branches of saplings. My arms were covered with scrapes and scratches.
"Teeny" Failbetter
There they were.
Through the window, she could see them, one on either arm of the sofa.
They seemed to be asleep.
She had her instructions, written on a piece of lined notebook paper. She had reviewed them earlier. Now the paper was cinched in her fist, blank side out, words hidden. Her hand was sweaty.
She looked at them through the window.
"Personal Foundations of Self-forming Through Autoidentification with Otherness" Barcelona Review
Chapter One. Beginnings.
I never fit in with my family, kind as they were. As a youth, I never
really found friends. Acquaintances, perhaps, but no one I could consider
my soul mate. I had a dark imagination; I came to a nihilistic outlook
too early to express my thoughts properly. Or perhaps I should say an existential
outlook, for although I was painfully aware of mortality, I did not reject
the idea of truth altogether. I felt that there was a truth for myself
that
I dared not examine —the stakes of self-examination felt much too
high for me at that age. So I crawled about with a black haze around
me, speaking as little as possible, refusing to participate in any of the
social
customs that seemed to me then a desperately thin patina of etiquette
in the face of our inevitably animal natures. While my sister made friends
and started to attract males, scampering about coquettishly, I developed
a battery of nervous tics and obsessive-compulsive rituals.
"Sugar" Post
Road
"
What's in the box?" Mother asked. She was standing by the closet door.
She held the door open with her hip. I looked down at her brown shoes with
their spongy soles. I had not heard her come up the carpeted stairs. I had
been caught. "It's her, isn't it," Mother said, "it's Sugar."
"The Doll Hospital" Mr.Beller's
Neighborhood
We found the doll right there on 16th Street in Brooklyn, outside the
Baptist church (now, don’t get too excited, they’re boring white
Baptists--no big hats or electric guitars anywhere in sight). The doll
was wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. Only its feet were showing,
chubby
little feet in high-button boots.
