January 2012
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A vague chill fog
We were still a little drunk on New Year’s morning while preparing for our next assignment, so the schematics were a more accurate reflection of the bottles we had emptied and the glasses we had broken over the holidays than of the route by which we planned to carry out our task.
We arrived at the wrong end of the industrial complex, where centuries of air pollution had created a unique...
October 2011
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August 2011
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Cruel summer weeds
We stood on the sidewalk in the light cast from the opera house’s bright lobby so as not to seem like we wanted to hide. The floor-to-ceiling windows afforded us a view of every corner of the space, which we watched with care between the movements of bodies, our eyes at the level of their knees. The confused winding of legs beneath skirts and trousers had suggested how this evening’s events would...
June 2011
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April 2011
2 posts
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Cross the street
It was early spring. The sky was cloudy and the earth was settling into its warmth. There had been a thunderstorm that morning while we were waiting for a bus we knew wouldn’t come. When we couldn’t hear each other anymore over the thunder and wind and shouts of fright, we took a silent vote to give up our task for the day. We felt like worms, damp and muddy, emerging from the drowning world into...
March 2011
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February 2011
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Nothing happened
We caught them coming out of the boardroom together late one Friday evening after everyone else had left for the weekend. We had stayed on late, cleaning up the mess we had feigned that day. They wouldn’t hire someone else to do this part. Some nights we played it up for the security cameras, but today we pretended to be real employees, reading novels hidden inside binders of SOPs,...
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In the night's open air
No one told us that the ferry we took out to the island that night was the last of the day. No one warned us that we would be stuck there for the night. In the morning, we would pretend that we hadn’t known.
We set up camp in a clearing on the far side of the island, where those in the city on the mainland were far enough away that they would not see our light. We found plenty of evidence...
January 2011
13 posts
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Broken mirror
We stood at the window in the dark, looking into a brightly-lit room in the building across the street. We were sure they were living the life we had lived a few years earlier. We felt like we were watching ourselves from the time we lived in apartments instead of hotels.
The furniture was the same, the walls the same shade, the slump of their shoulders the same. The same stain on the rug...
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Still and invisible
We waited in line for hours. Our bones creaked with the weight of the empty day. The soles of our shoes flattened out with every inch the streak of sunlight advanced across the room. We watched the clock’s hands circle themselves as people came in and out around us, leaving us still and invisible.
Johan passed a ball of worn elastic bands from hand to hand as it crumbled pale flakes on the...
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Faltering mid-sway
We sat at the end of a long table in the back of the room, shoved up against a window, held by the cold and stillness of the outdoors on one side and pulled by the heat and noise of the party on the other. Our elbows rested on the sticky tabletop or on the stiff backs of our chairs. Our hands cupped glasses of melted ice or foamy dregs.
We stared at each other unseeing, unwilling to shout loud...
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Recognition
We sat at the bar, waiting for our drinks. The way we came in and the way we placed ourselves in relation to each other made it unclear whether we were together. I kept my coat on; the others settled in, clearing their throats and putting their hands in their pockets as though to count their change or make sure they still had that business card. I had a book of poetry that I was ready to pull out...
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A promise or command
We were left to our own devices in the front room while the assistant went to the back office to get the paperwork ready. As soon as we heard the sound of her chair scraping the floor as she settled in at her desk, Sebastian ran his hands over the walls and Archer tapped a foot against the floorboards. Johan shuffled through papers in his briefcase. I listened to the neighbours’ conversation...
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Our exact destination
We travelled the highways in silence. Occasionally someone would curse out the driver under their breath as we all strained forward against our seatbelts or were thrown against each other. We took turns driving, depending on where we were headed or how soon we wanted to get there.
Usually only the driver knew our exact destination, using a map in their head that had been memorized in secret the...
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The garden in winter
We allowed ourselves to be ushered in through the back gate and into the garden. It was much too cold and windy to stay outside, but we couldn’t suggest anything that might oppose their wishes. Sylvia fussed over us until we sat down at the rusty patio table, already laid with horrible things to eat and drink, and Vernon, wearing an undershirt and red suspenders holding up his pants, watched...
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An invisible ruler
We circled those watching the parade, trying not to watch it ourselves. There were six floats: a robotic elephant, synchronized dog sleds on wheels, a theatre troupe in a tableau of winter trees, the local quilting club, its rival the knitting club, and a hockey game underway on two flatbed trucks hooked together as one and rigged to drive in perfect sync. Two additional floats were also to have...
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As always, the bed
We divided the flat surfaces of the hotel room into separate sleeping spaces. Johan settled into the bathtub, Sebastian claimed the rectangle of carpet in front of the television cabinet, and Archer stretched out in the hallway between bed and bath. I took, as always, the bed. On some nights I felt like a mother hen, or like a madame in a brothel, and other nights I felt helplessly insignificant....
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Half a million
The city had turned out to be smaller than we expected. The official record stated half a million people, but most of them really lived elsewhere. Businesses and residents had moved progressively further and further away from the centre of the city. Many of the houses and apartments were empty. Most of the storefronts had their open signs unplugged or permanently turned inward.
We spent a day on...
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Kicking in the bricks
We emerged from the parking garage onto the street through a door disguised as a window. In the seconds it took to orient ourselves without seeming not to know exactly what we were about, I spotted him at the centre of a group of people fresh from a taxi. The way he made a joke while they paid the driver and looked into the near distance at nothing on that busy street while they laughed told me...