I work in a large city, and take a train many miles home. The sky is dark when I leave and return and although I share my travels with hundreds of others, I speak to none of them. At my home awaits my invalid father, whom I hate. His vision has been impaired for nearly a decade and so he asks me to be his eyes. I relate to him a false world, telling him

Alexandre’s blood ran down the balcony railing. First it looked black, then red as it caught the light. I blinked as a drop landed in my eye and half the world went dark. When I wiped it away, a faint, pink blemish was left on my otherwise white skin. The clouds passed the horizon, dark and churning like another sea. The wind, roaring, caught Alexandre’s cloak and made it writhe away from his corpse. It

Winner of the Hear Here Emerging Authors Contest His name is Dakota. He’s the boy I’m thinking about, the boy who wears loose denim jeans and old sweatshirts that wrap around his body to cover bruises. It’s not just his father that does it; his mother completes it just as well to his neurons. So do some of the kids in school, which I guess taught him everyone abuses you in life. Well, at least