Category: issue 3

We here at the Lounge hope that you and your traveling companions are staying as safe as you can for the duration of this pandemic. Whether you’re stuck indoors for the foreseeable future, or whether you’re searching for something to take your mind off the state of the world for a while, we have a little something that will pique your interest.

Agent Heartbreak and the Misery Muse meet cute on a lonely-hearts cruise.

“Will you give your name this year?” Isheya’t asks. You shake your head, adjusting the woven straw pack on your shoulders and squinting out ahead into the red blaze of the sunrise. “Not planning on it. But ask me again in another hour.”

Summer is when we spend our days in the flooded rice fields, the fish tickling our ankles. Hours of planting stretching out like a bamboo stem in the wind. But there were never snakes before.

Seok Kim cursed the mountain as she walked. The mouse deer that ducked away from her stumbling gait wasn’t spared her wrath. As she loudly wished for a thousand fleas to infest its white-striped throat, someone stifled a laugh.

I met Gordy on my first day in junior crèche. I sat on my own in the cafeteria, aimlessly pushing food around, when a sturdily built boy with a shock of unruly hair sat opposite me, grinned, and introduced himself.

Anilay’s thumb hovered over the green call icon. Come on, girl! Tap into your inner succubus and be confident! Be daring! Come on, just call already! Sadly, her inner succubus seemed to be on vacation in Tahiti.

Hon. Sciorek, I am sorry again for what happened during my last assignment. Yurfiga was a challenging planet to integrate into Quarrex’s operations, and I would have liked to oversee the mass cleanup efforts myself. However, I understand you need me on Earth, and I promise to send regular reports.

Hatchi the *****-P****** emerges from a small wormhole—a shoebox-sized dimpling of space that vanishes once he waddles through—and steps onto a hill composed entirely of starlight.

Mynah found Lei in an isolated clot of an estuary town, in a valley mostly sheltered from the acrid squalls of the cursewinds. Nearly a year of searching and there they were at last: sitting on an upturned crate at the end of a jetty. A lone sampan bobbed in the water, among the bristling mats of hyacinth and drifting rubbish.