“Home is a Relative Term” by Christopher Gonzalez
"The thing about going home again is that you really do become the person you were when you were last permanently there. I was eighteen when I left for college, a month shy of turning nineteen..."
SO excited to get to share this one this week!
I say some version of that with every story… but with every story, it is true. It is exciting to fall in love with a story and get to publish it and share it with others and see the love for that story spread across readers.
I love Chris’s writing (if you haven’t yet read his collection, I’m Not Hungry But I Could Eat, I can’t recommend strongly enough picking up a copy right now) and this one is probably my new fave story of his yet. It grabs you right from the first line — “He never tells me his name.” — throwing us right into the story, with a confidence in voice that always excites me for the story to come. And, the story that then follows, is funny and tender and all the emotions in between, it is familiar in the way that the best stories have moments and feelings that are recognizable while also being surprising, at times in plot and other times with a great, small interaction or sentence.
Like I said, I’m really excited to get to share this one, and excited for you all to read it.
—Aaron Burch
Editor, Short Story, Long
“Home is a Relative Term”
He never tells me his name. When I open the app I find two pictures waiting for me: his white, hairless ass cheeks and the glint of an emerald green butt plug planted in between them like a flag. The photos of asses and dicks, they’re fine. I like to study them, but I prefer the tease of a round belly, a supple chest angled from below so it’s like I’m looking up from on my knees. Like I’m the one who is submissive. Eager. I respond to the blunt query with looking?
He lives a block over from my parents whom I’m visiting for the long weekend. I’m in town for my twin nephews’ fourth birthday, staying with my parents in the thick of suburban ennui. I’m exhilarated by his proximity, that I might be able to slip away unnoticed for an hour. The catch is, according to his messages, his family is in town too; we’re only able to hookup in his garage. I don’t tend to do this kind of thing. My sex life is rather vanilla. One time, there was the back of a delivery van. One time, behind the slide in the park connected to my middle school. A men’s stall in the old Penn Station. Usually there is a bed, at the very least a couch.
He waits for me on the front lawn. When I pass by his neighbor’s house he nods and leads me up the driveway. I squeeze past two tightly parked cars, walking with a slight hunch to avoid the windows of his house in case his family happens to look outside. It’s raining. The closer I get to him, the less into the idea of sex with him, specifically, I am. Which isn’t to say he’s unattractive, but his demeanor is off-putting. He walks like a shield: forward and onward and, please, don’t get too close. Moving through the shadows, into his garage, I feel like a spy, and it’s this hit of espionage that delights me. It’s not so much about taking on a new identity or an alias. I could be anyone, though so often I become what others desire. It’s the absence of an identity. A nothingness. I did not exist before appearing on his lawn, and I will dissipate once I leave. I am here, simply, to generate an orgasm.
Thank you, he whispers. Thanks for agreeing to this. I’m sorry we’re meeting under these circumstances. He waves around at the garage, which isn’t dirty, but also isn’t organized. There is no couch. No room for a car.
I get it, I say. The family thing. I couldn’t host if I wanted to.
Well, the thing is, he says, I’m not out to them.
Somewhere in the distance a record scratches. The blank profile photo should have tipped me off. I’m losing my touch. Oh, I say, I didn’t realize. Kind of bold to meet in the middle of the day, yeah? I mean, it’s cool. I just want to make sure this doesn’t draw any attention to you.
I’m definitely going to come out to them this year, he says.
No, that’s fine.
It’s happening this year. It has to.
In your own time and all that, I say.
Like, I’m so ready to. I have to, he says. You see, I got this niece who I’m pretty sure is gay. Like, she hasn’t said a thing about it directly, but there are signs. Huge ones. And I think my coming out would make things easier for her.
That’s sweet, I say, losing my erection. All this truth-telling—he’s closing the gap. I don’t believe in being a stone-cold bitch during hookups. I’m happy to talk after the act, after we’ve both gotten off and the pressure valve has been released. This is going against code. White guys love to fill every silence as if the absence of another person talking means the floor is theirs. I look around the garage again and wonder if a therapist’s chaise might roll in from the dark.
He continues talking. I lean against a short ladder. He is an RN, which sucked during the pandemic. It does mean he is up to date on all his vaccines and boosters, including monkeypox, which, upon his telling me this, he rolls up his sleeves and presents the two dots, isolated pink islands on the inside of his forearm, that match mine. He owns his house, the very one we’re not allowed to enter. At the moment, his conservative parents are occupying it, drinking coffee and watching Fox News on the flatscreen hanging above the mantelpiece in his living room. My father would be cool with it, he says. At least I don’t think he’d care all that much. It’s my mother, he says, she’ll be harder to persuade.
It’s not something you’re persuading her to believe, I say. It’s just reality.
She’d want to debate it. She has an idea about the kind of life I live and should be living.
And being a faggot goes against all of that?
He winces. I think about my own mother. A woman of faith. A woman of color. A woman who claims to be apolitical, yet whose views skew so aggressively toward conservatism it makes me dizzy thinking about how she birthed me, raised me, pushed me out into the world with some awareness of my social standing in this world, especially on matters of race and sexuality and gender and class, all as real to her as the extensions worn by thin white women on daytime talk shows. But check her out now: telling me about the kind of men I should date, telling me how my life, as I live it, could fit into her world.
Anyway, he says. Enough of that. He undoes my belt. I flinch. I’m unnerved at how quickly he switches gears. We loaded up on an emotional appetizer and now he’s ravenous for an entrée of sex. I am here for a purpose. I oblige.
My conversations with my mother are always the same. Whenever she picks me up from the airport she asks if I’m still happy living in New York given how expensive it is and how lonely I must be—a word I’ve never once used during our weekly correspondence but which clearly cuts through the silence surrounding my love (sex) life. And when she drops me off, she hugs me for longer than comfortable and asks when I’m moving back. Throughout any visit, she might tell me about a new apartment complex opening up close to downtown, or she’ll highlight the plays and musicals scheduled to tour through Cleveland next season. There’s a new restaurant she’s been dying to try but it’s on the east side and (her words) no one ever wants to drive that way. Her coworker’s son works at a bookstore; she hears he’s single, she hears he’s just my type (he looks like me if I wore glasses), she hears a lot of things that she passes on to entice me, a carrot on a string meant to lead me away from New York. She describes how fun things could be if I live here: the potential for weekly dinners, the outings to Chuck E. Cheese where we’d watch the twins run around with sauce-stained lips, attempting to throw a dusty ball through an off-sided hoop. Think about them, she says. Think about what you’re always missing when you’re never here.
I do think about the twins. Leonel and Lorenzo. They’re finally at the age where they’re starting to remember my face, that I enjoy giving them piggy-back rides, and how I guzzle apple juice (tequila) out of a sippy cup. That I let them watch their favorite Disney movie again and again without forcing them to try something new. They ask for me now on the phone. They’re the reason I return more frequently than in the past, when I’d only visit during the holidays and leave when there was still torn wrapping paper on the floor.
The day before my hookup, my mother and I watched the twins so my brother and his wife could go grocery shopping. The three of us played with their Hot Wheels. The cars are nicer than I remember. When I was kid, I had a suitcase full of them. I’d drag it around the house and they’d rattle and clang like loose change. It was a sign to everyone that I was on the move, ready to take off, just try to stop me!
Leonel snatched the car from Lorenzo who immediately broke into a crying fit. The little thief cackled, waving his free hand in the air, stomping his left foot. Brothers, I said, then mine walked into the living room.
Enough, he said. Leo, give your brother the car. Learn to share.
These boys, my mom said from her end of the couch. Play nice, you two. She pulled out her phone and tried to take a photo, though her subjects were on the move and the image came out blurry.
Lorenzo descended into a simmer, his eyes still bloodshot, puffy. I pulled him over to sit on my lap. I wouldn’t dare say this out loud: I’m always curious if one twin is operating with a queer heart. Is it the more obviously sensitive one? Who snuggles close to me in rooms filled with our loud family, eyeing everyone with equal parts curiosity and disdain. The one who prances a little, who skips in the sunshine. The one who colors neatly between the lines, holding up a purple marker in one hand and a pink crayon in the other, weighing the possibilities, the aesthetic. It could very well be the other one: gruff, running with heavy feet. He loves to tackle, to fling himself from the sofa without a landing. He sneaks out of his bed at night, tests fate, a little dare devil in nighttime Pampers. I’m situated enough in my queerness to understand that sometimes stereotypes are more accurate than a weather report, but also you don’t need to see the fat, wet drops to know it’s raining.
The twins tired themselves out after dinner. We carried them back to their respective beds. Because it was early, I suggested a movie, and my mother, nodding her head without looking up from her phone—I’ve come to accept she never looks up from her phone—said she’s okay with whatever I want. I grabbed a beer from the kitchen and brought her a glass of wine, and we sat in silence for the first twenty minutes. It was one of those streaming channel originals. The entire cast is sprinkled with Latine actors, including her celebrity crush, a man who looks like a bargain-bin Mario Lopez but whose humanitarian concerns and seemingly-inclusive politics online suggest he’s the better, improved version. That, and he once responded to my mother’s thirst post about him on Twitter.
You should find a guy like him, she said.
Not really my type.
A man that gorgeous, she said, who runs a farm on the side to feed the underprivileged kids in his community, who is openly an ally of the LGBTQ+, which should matter to you, of all people, oh, and he posts his favorite books every month, the whole stack of them! He’s a reader, Nico. That kind of man isn’t your type?
Mother, please, I said. He reads thrillers. I couldn’t keep up.
It was one of those streaming channel originals. The entire cast is sprinkled with Latine actors, including her celebrity crush, a man who looks like a bargain-bin Mario Lopez but whose humanitarian concerns and seemingly-inclusive politics online suggest he’s the better, improved version. That, and he once responded to my mother’s thirst post about him on Twitter.
In the garage, the RN welcomes me with a sloppy mouth. So, actually, I say, I’m an uncle too. My pants are now around my ankles; his front teeth graze the tip of my penis. I think it would be cool if either of them turned out to be queer, I say.
You’d really wish that? He stands, shutting his eyes tight, pressing his lips into a tight line.
Why wouldn’t I? I say. It would, of course, be a lie to tell him I was always proud to be queer, though I don’t think pride is the end goal. It is a factor of my identity I am unapologetic about, that which I did not choose but, at this point in my life, would choose again and again. If that’s pride, then so be it.
He removes his hoodie and tosses it onto a deep freezer. Don’t act like it’s been easy, he says, then he undoes his own belt.
I’m not pretending it’s been a great life, I say. Isn’t the point that we get to make it better? It’s okay if you’re not ready, but staying in the closet doesn’t make your niece any less gay.
I’m not sure why I care so much about this stranger. Being gay is an adversity in his life that, at least from where I’m sitting, looks easy. He is white. He is financially stable. He has questionable tastes in leisurewear. Still, he is fine. If I had stayed with my parents and moved out with them to Parma, being brown and queer and trying to carve out a space for myself here—well, it seems somewhat impossible. Though, yes, there are people of color pretty much everywhere, and other Latine queers are alive and well in Northeast Ohio. Just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it isn’t the reality for other people who aren’t me. The ones who didn’t leave are still here, living.
Can we just fuck? he asks. I’m really horny.
Again, I oblige. We’re back to basics.
*
After a hookup, my days are peppered with memories, the flashback of touch, the echo of a grunt or a moan. He comes to me in these flashes while I pour cereal into a bowl the next morning. I see his ass, wide and inviting, his knees pressed against the third step of a ladder. I had to stand on my toes to enter him, the burn building in my calves, shooting up into my knees and thighs. When he pulled his hoodie back on, it slid over his stomach, his love handles bruised from my grip.
My mother asks if I want to go for a drive. Nowhere in particular. The rain has cleared up and neither of us has had coffee. We choose Starbucks. The car line is wrapped twice around the block, everyone in the neighborhood desperate to dive into their late-afternoon errands fully caffeinated. At the window, we’re served by a cute bear, roughly college age. He looks annoyed to be there, which feels right given how the sun is poking through the streaky gray sky and he’s still on the clock. Behind him his coworkers, all equally young, laugh and smile and throw their heads back at some joke made by another coworker who is slender with a head full of blonde, curly hair. I can tell he’s too good looking to be genuinely funny. Our barista doesn’t engage. I get the vibe he doesn’t much like it here. He’d rather be somewhere else.
My mother scans the code on her phone then we’re back on the road.
Around Parma, we pass houses with overgrown lawns that were just months before plagued with Trump signs. This suburb is a large sprawl a stone’s throw away from Cleveland. Its makeup is so overwhelmingly white. My family is the only Puerto Rican bunch plopped down in the middle of retired cops, military vets, and older, mouthy men and women who campaign door-to-door to put a stop to the teaching of Critical Race Theory in the Parma school district. I would be shocked if these schools taught anything concerning race outside of the existence of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement, suggesting to their predominantly white students that there was a beginning and an end to racism, that we’re all free now and anyone who believes differently doesn’t understand the difference between today and a dark, faraway past.
In the car I sip a creamy iced latte and listen to my mother talk about her plans for the day. She asks if I’m available to watch the twins again with her tonight while my brother and his wife attend a work party. I say yes, then my phone vibrates with a message from the RN.
Hey. Yesterday was a lot of fun. Round 2 tomorrow?
We pull into our driveway. I click out of the app and snooze my notifications.
Over the years I developed this image in my family as having my shit together. I locked down a steady job in magazine publishing right out of college, though it shortly pivoted to digital and I had to learn how to write scripts and edit videos to stay afloat until I was eventually laid off at the start of the pandemic. In the summer of my unemployment, I learned to let go, to breathe. I started my days at noon, typed some words into a Google Doc about whichever restaurant I had outdoor-dined at the night before, devoting extra words to describing the waiters, their gelled hair, their tired eyes hanging above K95 masks, the veins that rippled like sculpted clay down their forearms. The stuff that allowed me to indulge my faggotry. The stuff that would never get published. In the evenings, I would eat dinner, either somewhere new, swiping myself into further debt, or from roasting an odd assortment of meat and vegetables on a sheet pan until everything was charred and bitter. Then I would imbibe a good old-fashioned cocktail. Enough of those (five) and I was ready for a deep sleep.
This is the life I think about when I’m visiting home again. I could do it anywhere. Why not around family? Why not try to live the life I dreamed for myself when I was sixteen and realizing that the sight of a dick could make my own twitch? Here, I could own property. I could spread out, take up more space for myself. Turn a third bedroom into a playroom for the twins. Have the family over for Sunday afternoon lunches, after they’ve been let out from church. I’m thirty: the fantasy of building a family isn’t latching onto my reality. Maybe that’s geography. Maybe that’s finances. Maybe leaving is what I needed in order to come back.
This is the life I think about when I’m visiting home again. I could do it anywhere. Why not around family? Why not try to live the life I dreamed for myself when I was sixteen and realizing that the sight of a dick could make my own twitch?
We arrive at my brother’s house fifteen minutes early. They’re still in the process of getting ready. My brother is putting on a tie. A hideous one, all scarlet in the wrong way. I greet the boys with tight hugs. Lorenzo runs around, flinging his stuffed dinosaurs against the wall, at the television. Leonel is curled up on the sofa, sucking his thumb.
What’s the matter, sweetie? My mom is at his side, pressing the back of her hand against his forehead. He’s warm, she says.
I know, poor baby, my sister-in-law says. She kisses both of us on the cheek, then kneels at the couch to kiss the sickly twin, too. He’s been like this since this morning, she says. We’ve given him Tylenol. He’s drinking water but not eating much.
I told you we should just cancel, my brother says. His tie is crooked, the top button of his shirt left open. Eyes so tired, they’re practically shut.
Ay, maybe, she says. Her makeup is half done; the eyelash glue is still wet. She is a good mother, a caring mother. The kind of mother, I think, who could handle a gay son.
They’ll be fine, my mother says. We got them. Go to the party, have fun. If anything comes up, we’ll call, she says. As long as his temperature doesn’t spike, he’ll be okay.
I watch over the little guy, so helpless, so tiny, and think about all the ways I might fail him. I can barely handle myself when I have a cold, and I worry about the frailty of children whose immune systems are still developing.
You sure it’s not too much trouble, Ma, my sister-in-law says, on her feet.
It’s nothing at all, my mother says.
We put on another movie to pass the time. This one has Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd. Aniston’s character is in love with Rudd, who is playing a gay man. She’s pregnant and wants to raise her child with him, though he has desires to be with a man, which is, in the framing of the movie, presented as heartbreaking—to me it seems like good sense. My mother isn’t paying much attention, scrolling through Facebook, posting pictures of the boys, especially the sick one, asking her friends and followers to please pray for his speedy recovery.
I ask her, What’s the sickest I’ve ever been?
Oh lord, she says. You must have been around three or so. We just moved in with your aunt. I remember getting called at work because you wouldn’t stop throwing up and you were crying so much.
I don’t remember that, I say.
I’ll never forget it, she says. The hospital was so cold that night and no one in the emergency room was taking it seriously. Kids are always getting sick, she says. When we finally got you checked out, you had a fever. I was so pissed. I cussed out every nurse that that night.
My mother, the god-lover, the evangelist with the potty mouth. I smile.
The movie ends by flashing forward to when Aniston’s daughter is five-years-old, singing a jazzy R&B number in the school choir. Everything works out for everyone, and they all live in harmony. When the credits roll, Leonel is crying, loudly, and nothing we try seems to calm him. We check his temperature and it’s over 103˚. The crying continues only now his eyes are fluttering and his body convulses. He is having a seizure.
My mother tells me to take Lorenzo into the living room. I keep him occupied with a couple of trucks, which he watches but doesn’t touch, at first. I run one back and forth over the couch cushion. Look, I say, isn’t this fun? He watches, folding his hands into tiny fists. In the next room, I overhear my mother on the phone, first telling my brother about Leonel, who’s crying has broken the stratosphere, everything around us reverberating, shaking, then she calls for an ambulance. Lorenzo picks up the truck, holds it in the air and moves it around like an airplane.
My task is to stay and prepare Lorenzo for bed while my mother drives Leonel to the emergency room. Lorenzo has no interest in sleep. He climbs on all the furniture, tosses his toys and pillows around the living room. Every so often he pauses, looks out the window, a flicker of recognition on his face: his brother was once here and now he is not.
I am not an adult. I am not a caretaker. I am sometimes barely a human. I know this is how many in my generation speak, as if we are meat sacks floating through the abyss without an ounce of agency, but it must be the case. When confronted with any mild inconvenience or conflict, my ability to think rationally is stripped down to nothing. I sit on the couch and watch my nephew wander the house looking for reason, wondering why the state of everything has shifted on him. I grab another beer from the fridge and drink it, quickly, the cold heavy down my throat. I drink another, and splash water in my face.
After an hour I’ve received no updates from my mother or brother. The twin is now sleepy, passing out next to his brother’s stuffed teddy bear. I open the apps. There, the RN’s last message hangs in limbo. I’m too shaky to type out a reply, so I hit the mic button and speak: Hey. Sorry. I know this is totally out of the blue. Look, if you got a second, I’m kinda freaking out. My nephew was taken to the hospital. A seizure. Not at all sure what’s happening. I could really use someone to talk to. I hit send and record a follow up message telling him my brother’s address.
The thing about going home again is that you really do become the person you were when you were last permanently there. I was eighteen when I left for college, a month shy of turning nineteen, but in my heart, I am thirteen when I’m here — I think that’s when it first hit me, the desire to leave, to start something of my own. I get driven around by my mother. I let my brother pay for drinks when we’re out. I try to be better about this, understanding that I make more than him, even if my cost of living is higher, but he wouldn’t handle things any differently. I am his younger brother, and so it’s his role to be the one who pays, the one who leads.
I came out to my brother first. We hardly ever talk on the phone; maybe every few months we’ll exchange a text. Phone calls are saved for special occasions. When I found out he and my sister-in-law were expecting, when our father succumbed to lung cancer, or when, before his wedding, he considered not going through with it. He wasn’t sure, he said. He wasn’t sure if he could be the husband she needed, or if he’d be able to provide a life for the two of them. I told him, then, that there was no way of knowing if everything would turn out fine. We could choose what made us happy now. It’s the same logic he fired back at me when I called him one night, after drinking, after trying and failing to gain the attention of some guy at the bar.
He answered after two rings. He was up late playing video games. I’m heartbroken, I said, just absolutely wrecked.
Who is she? He asked.
Not she, I said. He. He. He. I’m gay, man. I’m fucking gay.
He laughed, said, Okay, first off, fuck that guy, and then I broke down. Overwhelmed by the feeling that it was finally out there in the open and the realization that my brother is a better man than I had given him credit for. For the first time in our lives as brothers, we really talked. The shield was down. I could just be.
The thing about going home again is that you really do become the person you were when you were last permanently there. I was eighteen when I left for college, a month shy of turning nineteen, but in my heart, I am thirteen when I’m here — I think that’s when it first hit me, the desire to leave, to start something of my own.
The RN messages that he is here twenty minutes later. He doesn’t knock as I’ve asked him not to. I open the side door and welcome him into the kitchen. I offer him a beer, the last of the pack.
Thanks for coming, I say. I’m feeling pretty crazy.
Hey, he says, no, I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. Holy shit, you must be so scared.
I am, I say. I am. He sets his bottle down and pulls me in for a hug. I wasn’t too familiar with his scent. We kept a distance during sex, never kissed. Even when I was fucking him, I did so without wrapping myself around him. The thinking then was, if he’s hiding in plain sight, I shouldn’t pour my sweat on him, give his parents something to sniff out. In the garage, after we finished, he took the condom and held the opening between his fingertips. Look at that load, he said, and shook the condom sack. Now, he uses those same fingers to play with one of the curls in my hair.
He kisses my neck, and I think about Lorenzo in the other room, finally sleeping. The RN then unbuttons my shirt, kisses my chest down to my stomach. I’m far drunker than I should be watching after one twin, waiting for updates on the other. I allow my body to fall limp, and he presses me against the sink, hoists me up. Hey, hey, I say, we can’t. But he’s already undoing my belt again, unzipping my jeans, taking me into his mouth. It’s funny how cyclical it all is. Have sex with a person once, it’s all new and exciting. A second time, there’s an established rhythm, the coming together of two bodies familiar enough to know their place in the routine.
I’m getting close to finishing when he stops and says, Oh shit, fuck, and then I see Lorenzo standing in the doorway. He’s looking up at us, sleep still glazed over his eyes. I slide to the floor.
Well, we certainly fucked up, haven’t we?
I’m sorry, you gotta leave, I say. You gotta go now.
But he’s on his hands and feet crawling toward Lorenzo. Hey, hey there, little buddy, he says. Did we wake you? The twin is eyeing him up and down, this strange white man. How much did he see? How long before the RN noticed him and stopped? I’m queasy, the beer rising up into my mouth. I turn and release it, all yellow and steaming, into a sink of unwashed dishes.
You’re going to be okay, the RN says, now standing. He holds his hand out and the twin grabs one of his fingers. Your brother is going to be okay.
My phone rings—my mother. It’s all static on her end, but I catch the gist: they’re not sure what’s wrong with him. Leonel will need to stay overnight for testing. My brother is staying with him and my sister-in-law is coming back with my mother to pack a bag. The two of us are staying the night, so it would be appreciated if I could set out the extra set of sheets from the linen closet. She asks after Lorenzo. Out in the living room, the RN is playing Hot Wheels with him. They’re laughing, the RN covering his own mouth to hold in the sound. Yes, that’s him in the background I say. He can’t get enough of those cars.
And though the hospital is only twenty minutes away, I figure it might be worth pushing my luck and waiting fifteen before telling the RN he has to leave. He’s good with kids. I can see that. He must really love his niece. I create a nest for myself on the couch with a blanket and throw pillows, and watch as he explains the difference between the two cars.
This one, he says, holding a white Mini Cooper, is reliable. You’ll always make it home. And this other one here, he says, holding up a blue Rimac Nevera, is fast and sleek and will take you wherever you want to go, no matter how far away. Any adventure you want to go on, this is your guy. Which do you choose? It’s a silly game not based at all in reality, and still Lorenzo studies each car as this is the most important decision he might ever face. This could change the course of his life. He wraps his little fists around both cars, pulls them both to his chest, and giggles. When he places one on my lap, I’m disappointed to find the Rimac Nevera rolling down my thigh. I offer it back to Lorenzo, hoping he might want to trade, see the world, as I have. It’s not time for me to leave just yet. But then he’s on his feet again, so gleeful with his decision, running back to his bedroom with the Mini Cooper held high above his head.
STORY:
Christopher Gonzalez (he/him) is the author of the story collection I’m Not Hungry but I Could Eat (SFWP, 2021). He was named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction in 2021, and his writing can be found in places like HAD, Split Lip, Poets & Writers, the Nation, Best Microfictions, and Best Small Fictions, among others. He currently works in book publishing, serves as a fiction editor for Barrelhouse magazine, and lurks most places online @livesinpages.
*
ART:
Nikita Andester (she/they) is an artist and author living in Toulouse, France. They showcase art around the city and host the seasonal Authors + Apéros, a literature event aimed at AI-proofing indie authors' futures. Her creative work has been featured in literary magazines including The New Orleans Review, she was an Elizabeth George finalist, and she's spoken at sci-fi/fantasy conventions like EasterCon and WorldCon about the artist's life. Find their work at www.nikitaandester.com or on Substack.
Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Chris about this story.
Nice story. Well written. Totally engrossing. The characters are compelling. The premise intriguing. Thanks.
Sooo good.