Oxygen Tank by Vina Nguyen
It weighs as much as a grown man’s leg. Its shape, a torpedo. Imagine hauling a torpedo behind you on a stick with wheels, and with a swath of heat or hit of pressure, it can explode and destroy everything.
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It weighs as much as a grown man’s leg. Its shape, a torpedo. Imagine hauling a torpedo behind you on a stick with wheels, and with a swath of heat or hit of pressure, it can explode and destroy everything.
[…]
When Ba built the garage floor, no walls, no roof existed. White, large men drove in with a truck that housed a sideways rolling barrel; it churned liquid cement into a square, thin pool. The men and Ba settled the grey gruel, swept and spread it out with their metal-bladed, long brooms. […]
Within the chapel there is a hum, a soft whisper, as a congregation of hymn sheets are placed upon pew backs. […]
I come from an empty bottle. Not like a genie; more like a thick stench – the residual, acrid tang that lingers even after a bottle is dry. […]
Mine is not a complicated song. It has been sung for generations before me, and it will be sung for generations more. On a clear day, it can be heard for miles […]
The dead dog rattles in its box on the back seat. I’m driving as fast as I can, faster than I should. All I brought with me were the box and the spade. […]
“If you listen to pop music, your brains will melt all splotchy like a pizza,” warned Mother Mary Moppet, headmistress of our school, during a parent–student assembly. […]
In the future, the only way to make a living is by digging graves. Coffins are no longer made out of fine mahogany and walnut; they are planted and the bodies become trees. […]
Lance watched from his window as the leashed ferret scampered down the sidewalk in front of his house. The legions of morning dog walkers had already trooped past his yard sign proclaiming […]
I pulled my jeans back on. They were damp, lying there on the floor, beside his oddly placed slow cooker […]