Stories Archives - Page 10 of 17 - Sensitive Skin Magazine

The Forgetting of Water

Doug Rice

Mai struggles to experience the place of words in her body. The slow patience of her tongue, of her lips. The care she gives to each letter, the way each letter shapes her mouth. Each word changes her. This foreign tongue...

Sucker

Susan Scutti

I was walking along the south side of Houston, heading home from a friend’s house. I’d stopped by to pick up my copy of The Big Sleep, one of many loaned-and-borrowed books between us. I was living on Prince Street then...

The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see ...

The Veldt

Ray Bradbury

"George, I wish you'd look at the nursery.""What's wrong with it?""I don't know.""Well, then.""I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to look at it.""What would a psychologist want with a nurser...

The Nose

Nikolai Gogol

Part I On 25 March an unusually strange event occurred in St. Petersburg. For that morning Barber Ivan Yakovlevitch, a dweller on the Voznesensky Prospekt (his family name is lost now—it no longer figures on a signbo...

The Soul of the Doll

Robert C. Hardin

Being the Recollections of a Late Inmate (1931–1946) of the Dalmarnock Asylum for Children in Glasgow, Scotland The eyes were what changed and flayed me above all else—the eyes or, rather, the doll’s eye...

Sick Lazy Fuck

Mark McCawley

“If you look a dog in the eye too intently, it may recite an astounding poem to you. You might have been mad for a long time and have realized it only at that moment.” —Jean Genet, Funeral Rites Si...

Guy Walks into a Bar circa 1997, Hollywood

Karen Lillis

So this guy walks into the bar last Thursday, and he sorta “lets it slip” that he’s Lawnchair Larry. This older guy, you know? He says it to me right before I’m gonna tell him what he owes me for a light draft. I...

The Battle of Skinner Butte

Ray Jicha

Moving north from San Francisco I slept on the beach near Arcata then made my way to Eugene where I got dropped off around 10:00 p.m. I found a little downtown bar, ordered a draft to pay for the stool and washed down t...

How to Stop Smoking in Nineteen-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty-seven Seconds, Usama

Chavisa Woods

I asked no questions about anything. i just wanted to smoke cigarettes. Lots and lots of cigarettes. I come back once a year to visit. I only stay a few days. I try not to ask too many questions. There’s noth...