March Reprints: Week 1

 

Darrell has two choices, one good choice and one bad choice. We cannot be sure which is which, however, perhaps because we are only as human as Darrell, which is to say, seven-eighths human and one-eighth alien. We know the human chunk—ours and Darrell’s—creates the indecision, but identifying indecision does not improve our confidence. Indecision is complicated, and we try to understand, thirst for explanations. But we avoid obsession, which is difficult when our nonhuman eighth, different from Darrell’s, spins spider webs of our thoughts and makes our veins glow purple, especially the veins behind our eyes, which are always bloodshot, streaked, crisscrossing behind our eyelids into cranial darkness, where we cannot see but wish we could.

For the first week of our annual reprint feature, we’re pleased to share Dustin M. Hoffman’s “Seven-Eighths,” originally published in print in Artifice Magazine. Continue reading the full story here.