Something Outré

“What’s wrong with it?”

Two boys stood in an empty lot between tenements, shielded from street view by evening darkness and a battered chain-link fence. A spindly, barren oak swayed mildly in the wind above them. Eddison, scrawny and little and brown, had a stick the width of his forearm hanging from one loosely clenched fist, just looking for a reason to poke at the twisted, ashen figure before them.

“It’s a she,” Almer said. Broad and short and dark, he squatted even closer to the ground than he normally was to clinically examine the situation. The dirt under the woman was dry and crumbly, almost gravel.

Bridge and Tunnel

Twilight rose above the mouth of the Holland Tunnel and then disappeared behind it as Shari drove. The tile swallowed up her mother’s silver Camry and made the Boyz II Men mixtape so loud that the car sounded like a bachelorette’s party bus, so she turned the stereo all the way down. From the passenger seat, Cristal reached a freshly manicured hand out to turn it back up.

“Calm down, woman!” Shari swatted her sister’s hand away. “We’re not at the club yet!”

Cristal huffed, flamingo-like in her elegant long-ness and bad attitude.

“Haven’t you ever heard of ‘pre-gaming?’” Beltless, she turned in her seat, so that nearly half her skinny body was in the back and facing their little cousin Lindsay. “Linz, you heard of pre-gaming?”