Corpus Callosum Press

The research assistant held in her lap a cigar box. She said they were studying tickles. Of course we were suspicious. The ad in the paper had said nothing about tickles; the ad had said the purpose of the experiment was to “fine-tune the human sensory apparatus and challenge widely accepted notions of the real.” Fifty bucks for a one-hour session. We had thought, Sweet . We had practically skipped all the way to the university. I said dinner tonight was on me. But now we were dubious—highly...

The helicoptering seeds that fell from the trees were slicing people up real good. Real good. That was our first clue. There would be many more clues to come, but as far as clues go, that first one was a doozy. The messages written on the leaves, spelled out in faint branching vesicles, were almost unnecessary, redundant, superfluous. WE’RE GONNA SLICE YOU ALL UP REAL GOOD, one of them read. Well, yeah. Message already received, you mighty, murderous oak or elm or maple. I probably don’t...

I had a dream that something big would happen after Frederick, though I knew not what. I know, I know: the formality of the phrase I knew not what might make it seem as though I wasn’t juggling at the time, but I was. I was juggling. Check this shit out, I said, to each person who entered the rumpus room. Simon, Alice, Moonshot, Fennel Seed, Dougie. They all came in, one b’one. I was juggling eggs. I’d hard-boiled them, which is a form of cheating in juggling circles. Hard-boiling goes...