i’m happy to say that one of my favourite characters, Fast Eddy, has made it into print. check out GRAIN Magazine (39.4) for my story “The Suitable Dress”. it’s a story about a woman with vertigo. here’s an excerpt:
Sarah watches Fast Eddy sleep. Fatigue pools under his eyes like smog. She wonders how he can sleep in a swaying building. They’re thirty-four floors above solid ground. At any moment they could be sucked across parquet flooring, thrown against single pane glass and fall to their deaths.
Sarah tries not to think about the eighteen maids and four children who’ve perished this year, tumbling out of open windows. The maids leaning out, wiping window exteriors into a shine, overreaching. The children, playing in window seats, dropping a toy and chasing after it. Sarah tries not to think of children and toys, falling in tandem.
Instead, she thinks about her upcoming wedding and The Suitable Dress. She thinks about the woman scheduled to wear it. She wakes Fast Eddy and says, “We can’t see each other again.”
“Mmmhmmm,” says Fast Eddy. He props himself up onto his elbow.
“I’m vertiginous—”
“Tell me what you want, Sarah.” Fast Eddy reaches for her, caresses the vulnerable aspect of her waist, between rib and hip. The ambiguous space between men and women.
Sarah has no idea how to answer because no one has ever asked her what she wants.
“This?” asks Fast Eddy. “Or this?”
“This,” says Sarah and shows him.
Rain slides down the window like a screen. (p 18-19)