Things to read

At Rick Magazine, Roxane Gay's Baby Arm.

I’m dating a guy who works as a merchandiser for a large department store and one of his duties includes designing window displays. He tells me this on our third date. We have already slept together, twice. I’m not a hard sell.  When he tells me about his job, we are at a sleazy bar, drinking beer from the tap in frosted mugs. I tap my foot against his. I say, “I’m ready to go back to your place whenever you are.” I am anxious about all the “getting to know you” conversation we are having. I’ve never enjoyed sitting through previews at movies. It always seems like such a waste of time. ... A couple months later, he comes over to my apartment in the middle of the night because we’ve long abandoned any pretense of a mutual interest in anything but dirty sex and he’s holding a fiberglass baby arm, painted the color of flesh. He hands it to me and says, “I thought you might like this,” and I take the baby arm and tell him if he’s not careful, I will fall in love and he says he would be fine with that. 

At Dark Sky, the first chapter of Shane Jones' Failure Six.

The messenger was given an address by way of pushed note under his wooden door.

The messenger had been dreaming of owls and capes. In his dream he saw a revolver go off inside the owl’s cape. The revolver made a coughing sound and the wounded owl opened his mouth and made a sound like paper being pushed across a floor.

The messenger woke, blew out the candle on his nightstand, and saw a white pamphlet inside a large sheet of brown paper on the floor.

The person outside the door had a dream the night before too. It was of rainbow colored blobs falling from a pea-green sky.

Antun was the messenger’s name. Two pastel blue-colored triangles were stuck on his face.

The message read:

Enclosed pamphlet, please find necessary information to relay to seamstress — Yours Truly.