Tiny Crimes Read online

  Sincerely and as always,

  [Purple Pills]

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  We Are Suicide

  Benjamin Percy

  I work for the new mall. I’m the guy they hired to guard the spot where people keep killing themselves.

  The mall doesn’t look like much from the outside. But on the inside it’s pretty nice. Fountains bottomed with sparkling quarters. A movie theater with reclining leather seats. Restaurants that serve twenty different types of hamburgers.

  You don’t expect bad things to happen in a place like this.

  It started with a high schooler. She threw herself off the six-story parking structure. The square of concrete

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  she hit is still stained a rusty brown. Like a mildewed gravestone that fell on its side.

  Her friends and family made a memorial of flowers and teddy bears. They held a candlelight vigil. Somebody played the guitar and sang a song, but before he could finish it, a seventy-year-old woman dropped out of the sky and slammed the sidewalk. They say people twenty feet away got sprayed with her blood.

  The mall closed the top level of the parking structure. But that didn’t stop the man—Kinko’s manager, divorced with two kids—from parking his car and leaving the door open and situating himself directly over that same stained slab of concrete.

  With a pistol he ejected his brains out the back of his head.

  That’s why I’m here. Eight hours a day, I patrol the parking structure and the sidewalk below. The memorial continues to grow. The mall asked maintenance to clean it up, but more flowers and teddy bears kept appearing, so eventually they gave up. Petals snow across the concrete when the wind rises.

  If I see someone lingering, maybe knuckling a tear from their eye, I ask, “How are you today?”

  They will startle at the sound of my voice. Their lips will tremble when they say, “Fine,” at a whisper and hurry away.

  Benjamin Percy

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  Except for this one lady. The lady in red. She works as a waitress at one of the restaurants that serves twenty different types of hamburgers. Her uniform is red pants and a red apron and a white-collared shirt.

  I’ve noticed her more than a few times, jogging from the bus stop, late for her shift. Or taking a quick smoke break near the dumpsters out back.

  “How are you today?” I ask her, and she doesn’t say a word. Just looks at me with her eyes half-lidded, like she was on her way to falling asleep.

  People not saying anything make me nervous. So I stupidly fill up the silence. “Feel that bite in the air?” I say. “Not too long until we’ll be fighting the snow.”

  It is then that she reaches for the bulge inside her jacket.

  I stutter-step toward her, my hands out—my mouth ready to shout no—but it’s not a gun in her hand. It’s a teddy bear. Slick red fur, white shirt with a hamburger emblazoned on it. She adds it gently to the memorial, one of thirty.

  “Did you know her?” I ask.

  Her voice is a rasp. “Which her?”

  “Either her?”

  “No. Not him neither.” She gives me that sleepy stare again, shrugs. “Just felt like saying hello.”

  Before she heads toward the mall, she toes the stained square of concrete, like someone testing the water before diving in.

  We Are Suicide

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  It’s not like I’m a cop kicking down doors and shooting up warehouses. I’m not even an unshaven private investigator sucking on a flask and chasing down clues.

  But eight hours a day, I walk the perimeter of a crime scene. That does something to you. Makes you think about what went wrong.

  Some claim it’s because of the election. The country is going to hell, as they see it, so they might as well too.

  Others say it’s contagious. “Endemic” is the word in the newspapers. Like a yawn. All I have to do is say that word—“yawn”—and you’re already stifling one with your fist. Suicide apparently works the same way. You can catch it.

  And still others say this place is haunted. Not the mall, but the soil it stands on . . .

  This is Cliffs, Minnesota. We’re a suburb of the Twin Cities now, but before that we were a town, and before that we were farms, and before that we were prairie and trees, and around that time we were the place where the army rounded up a bunch of Dakotas and hung them from trees like ornaments.

  Maybe that’s the reason. Maybe the stain is bigger

  Benjamin Percy

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  than I can see. Maybe there’s something soaked into the very spirit of this place.

  I didn’t see it happen. I was patrolling the parking garage.

  I found a huddle of people gathered on the sidewalk. A woman in a black pantsuit spoke loudly into her cell phone, saying, “Just send somebody!” Someone let out a whimpering mewl.

  I rushed over and pushed through their bodies and the lady in the pantsuit said, “Oh, thank God,” as if I could somehow make a difference.

  The lady in red lay on the sidewalk, sprawled across the stained square of concrete. She hadn’t jumped. She hadn’t shot herself. Her eyes remained half-lidded even in death. I tried to close them but they sprung back.

  The red of her apron might as well have been blood.

  Why the mall?

  People are supposed to come here to eat giant pretzels smeared with mustard and get their hair styled and try on sunglasses and sit in the massage chairs. This is supposed to be a place where every kind of person comes together and forgets about their shitty problems.

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  Maybe that’s not possible anymore. And maybe the mall just feels like one big million-pound reminder that that’s not possible anymore. A concrete sarcophagus.

  But what do I know? I can’t even do my job.

  Four o’clock is sundown. The sodium lamps throw cones of light I hurry between. Something that is not quite snow sparkles in the wind. I keep hearing noises—like a whimper or the scud of a shoe—that make me spin around.

  I feel safest near the memorial.

  Some grit patters my shoulder and I look up. I’m not sure what I see—on the top level of the parking garage—but I see something. Black and ragged as a crow’s wings. I do not say, “How are you today?” I say, “Stop!”

  By the time I get up the staircase, my lungs are heaving and my pulse throbs in my ears.

  I buckle on a pistol every morning. This doesn’t seem strange to me until now. I’m supposed to be the guy who prevents death, not causes it.

  I see nothing, no one. But the gun remains in my hand. It feels as right there as a finger.

  Why did I take the job? Because it paid thirteen dollars an hour and seemed like an easy gig. But then it started to get to me. Gnaw at me. The stuffed animals

  Benjamin Percy

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  and the flowers and the stain, the stain, the stain, soaking into me.

  I creep across the empty stretch of concrete—until I reach the edge. I have become the dark shape. Up here the wind is hard enough and cold enough that my vision blurs, so that I think I can see all of them waiting for me down there, their arms wide open and waiting to catch me when I fall.

  We Are Suicide

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  Alibi

  Charles Yu

  What do I have to say for myself? Okay. Fine. I was there. Yeah, I realize that’s not a good alibi. I was there at the scene of the crime, at the time the crime occurred. Terrible fact pattern for me, I admit. Worst possible alibi. Kind of the opposite of an alibi. Like, as in, I don’t really have an alibi. But you know I didn’t do anything wrong. How do you know that? Well, for starters, I’m a good person. Good people don’t do things like what’s being alleged. How do I know I’m a good person? Because, I don’t hurt people. You can look it up. My track record: I don’t hurt people. Intentionally. Except for those closest to me. But everyone does that. T
hat’s just called human nature. We hurt our loved ones. So yeah, I hurt them, sometimes. I

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  don’t hurt strangers. Unless they cut me off. Or change lanes without signaling. Or look like they’re about to. I’ve flipped a bird or two in my time. May have spanked a kid in anger. My kid, I mean. Obviously I would never spank anyone else’s kid. Although I can think of a few who’ve probably deserved it. But I restrain myself. Because: that’s the kind of person I am. Restrained. Non-spanking, mostly. Maybe I judge people, but who doesn’t? Who doesn’t enjoy doing that, in the privacy of his own home, own head? That doesn’t make me a monster. Or a criminal. It makes me pretty normal, I think. Shows I have a conscience. I have morals and standards. Ask my spouse, my neighbors, my co-workers. They’ll all tell you. Good dude, decent dude. I don’t cheat on my taxes. Not any more than anyone else does. So what do I have to say for myself? I’ll tell you what: I don’t appreciate this line of questioning. Being interrogated, like I’m guilty of something. Especially when we all know who the real problem is. Not me. It’s them. It’s him. You know it is. I’m one of the good guys. You even said it: I was a witness. So why do I feel like now I’m a suspect? Of course I’m being defensive. You try sitting here, getting interrogated for just keeping to yourself, for living your life, going along, not hurting anyone, staying out of everyone’s way. See how you like it. You know I didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe I didn’t do anything right, either. Maybe I watched it go down. Still

  Charles Yu

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  watching it now. As the crime is ongoing. As the crime is turning out not to be at all what I thought was being alleged. Is being a bystander a crime now? If so, then fine. You got me. I’m guilty of being a bystander. If that’s a crime then I’m guilty. All this, going on around me, but I did absolutely nothing. Guilty as charged. I’m guilty. I’m guilty. I’m guilty. I am.

  Alibi

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  Permissions acknowledgments

  “See Agent.” Copyright © 2018. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Good Hair.” Copyright © 2018 by Marta Balcewicz. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Minor Witchcraft.” Copyright © 2018 by Chiara Barzini. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Hall at the End of the Hall.” Copyright © 2018 by Ryan Bloom. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Night Train.” Copyright © 2018 by Fabien Clouette and Quentin Leclerc, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman. Printed by permission of the authors. The preceding portion of this novel-in-installments was published in The White Review’s June 2017 issue.

  “A Bead to String.” Copyright © 2018 by Michael Harris Cohen. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Knife Fight.” Copyright © 2018 by Julia Elliott. All rights reserved. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Nobody’s Gonna Sleep Here, Honey” first appeared in BuzzFeed. Copyright © 2018 by Danielle Evans. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Law of Expansion.” Copyright © 2018 by Brian Evenson. Printed by permission of the author.

  “nobody checks their voicemails anymore not even detectives.” Copyright © 2018 by Sasha Fletcher. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Odds.” Copyright © 2018 by Amelia Gray. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Ghost Light.” Copyright © 2018 by Elizabeth Hand. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Exit Interview.” Copyright © 2018 by Christian Hayden. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Luser,” by Yuri Herrera, translated by Lisa Dillman. Copyright © 2018. Printed by permission of the author.

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  “Give Me Strength.” Copyright © 2018 by Karen Heuler. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Airport Paperback.” Copyright © 2018 by Adam Hirsch. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Actual Urchin.” Copyright © 2018 by Henry Hoke. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Any Other.” Copyright © 2018 by Jac Jemc. Printed by permission of

  the author.

  “Ratface.” Copyright © 2018 by Paul La Farge. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Circuit City” first appeared in The Arkansas International. Copyright © 2018 by J. Robert Lennon. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Mary When You Follow Her.” Copyright © 2018 by Carmen Maria Machado. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Three Scores.” Copyright © 2018 by Nick Mamatas. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Trashman Cometh.” Copyright © 2018 by J. W. McCormack. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Meme Farm.” Copyright © 2018 by Adam McCulloch. Printed by permission of the author.

  “No Exit.” Copyright © 2018 by Fuminori Nakamura, translated by Allison Markin Powell. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Withhold the Dawn.” Copyright © 2018 by Richie Narvaez. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Final Rescue.” Copyright © 2018 by Kenneth Nichols. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Hygge” first appeared in Harper’s Magazine. Copyright © 2016 by Dorthe Nors. English translation © by Misha Hoekstra. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “We Are Suicide.” Copyright © 2018 by Benjamin Percy. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Fifth of July.” Copyright © 2018 by Helen Phillips. Printed by permission of the author.

  Permissions acknowledgments

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  “What We Know.” Copyright © 2018 by Misha Rai. Printed by permission of the author.

  “[Purple Pills].” Copyright © 2018 by Rion Amilcar Scott. Printed by permission of the author.

  “These Are Funny, Broken Days” was first published by New York Tyrant. Copyright © 2018 by Amber Sparks. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Loophole.” Copyright © 2018 by Adam Sternbergh. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Friends.” Copyright © 2018 by Laura van den Berg. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Rhetorician.” Copyright © 2018 by Adrian Van Young. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Dogface.” Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Wang. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Highway One.” Copyright © 2018 by Benjamin Whitmer. Printed by permission of the author.

  “The Wrong One.” Copyright © 2018 by Erica Wright. Printed by permission of the author.

  “Alibi.” Copyright © 2018 by Charles Yu. Printed by permission of the author.

  Permissions acknowledgments

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  About the Editors

  LINCOLN MICHEL is the author of Upright Beasts, a collection of short stories from Coffee House Press. His fiction and criticism appear in The New York Times, GQ, Granta, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and elsewhere. With Nadxieli Nieto, he is the coeditor of Gigantic Worlds, an anthology of science flash fiction. He is a founding editor of Gigantic and the former editor in chief of Electric Literature. You can find him online at lincolnmichel.com.

  NADXIELI NIETO is an editor and art director. She is the coeditor of Carteles Contra Una Guerra, which won the Premis Ciutat de Barcelona, and Gigantic Worlds, with Lincoln Michel. Formerly, she was the managing editor of the award-winning NOON annual and editor in chief of Salt Hill journal. Her poetry has appeared in publications such as The New York Tyrant, West Wind Review, and Washington Square Review, among others. She is on the steering committee of Latinx in Publishing (LxP). Her collaborative artist books may be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

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  About the Contributors

  WESLEY ALLSBROOK was born in Durham, North Carolina. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design. Then she moved to Brooklyn, New York. She has been recognized by the Art Directors Club, the Society of Publication Designers, the Society of Illu
strators, American Illustration, Communication Arts, and the 3x3 Annual. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She draws for print, for the web, for comics, and for VR.

  Anonymous prefers to remain anonymous.

  Marta Balcewicz lives in Toronto. Her prose, poetry, and comics appear in The Offing, Catapult, Hobart, Pithead Chapel, The Normal School, and elsewhere.

  Chiara Barzini is an Italian screen and fiction writer. She has lived and studied in the United States where she collaborated with Italian Vanity Fair, GQ, XL Repubblica, Rolling Stone Italy, Flair, and Marie Claire while publishing essays in American magazines such as The Village Voice, Harper’s, Vogue, Interview Magazine, Vice, and Rolling Stone. Her fiction has appeared in BOMB Magazine, The Coffin Factory, Noon, New York Tyrant, Vice, and Dazed & Confused. She is the author of the story collection Sister Stop Breathing (Calamari Press, 2012) and Things That Happened Before the Earthquake (Doubleday, 2017). She has written a variety of screenplays for both television and film.