Scot Lancer heard the foot falls of giants. Under the three moons in the clear night sky, he could see for hundreds of yards in any direction on the open rocky range. The earth still shook underfoot with the ponderous tread of titans. Off to his left side,…

The city never slept. At least, not in a way that lets you breathe. Karachi in the summer of ’97 was a pulse you felt in your chest long before you heard it in the streets—the clatter of boots, the hiss of tires, the occasional pop that could be a gunshot or…

It all started when I came to Moscow for my master’s in Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication. After completing my bachelor’s in Literature and Linguistics in Pakistan, I already had a strong interest in different cultures. I enjoyed meeting new…

Drumbeats, hearts melting. Your memory haunts the corridors of my sequestered dreams, where silhouettes of mountains fill the horizon and tinkles of orchestrated mewlings shatter the chill of a full moon night in northern British Columbia. A land I swore I’d…

You were gone for two months when I noticed her. I didn't see it at first, because her hair was lightened and she wore it up. She didn’t wear glasses or makeup like you. Perhaps I didn’t want to admit the similarities, but once I did, I realized I had a…

I saw her for the first time in 1998. I was in high school back then, and I was about to see the literal beauty queen of the city. No exaggeration, she was stunning. She looked like the Lead Singer of Ace of Base quite a lot. One of my close friends objected…

“What? Still no prezzie for my wife? Crap!” But no. The mailbox was resolutely empty! Okay, so I know that, as usual, I'd left it until the last minute, but that site had promised it was absolutely guaranteed to be here by today at the very, very latest! But…

 In 1986 Shawn was just another sixteen year old kid trying to survive on the ghetto streets of New York. His dad was a white guy that abandoned his pretty Latina mom. Her name was Lita and she was a young, lovely lady that was an illegal immigrant and she…

The wind had no mercy that night. Kund Malir stretched before me like a forgotten promise, the highway’s asphalt dissolving into sand and shadow. My car’s headlights barely pierced the darkness; the desert swallowed everything else. I had been driving for…

Michelle had fully expected to find one or two beer corpses in the tents in the garden the morning after her wedding. However, she hadn’t expected to find the body on the bricked round barbecue. Now that she saw her cousin lying there with the barbecue spit…

Professor Elena Viktorovna Moshnyaga always said one thing to her students in Moscow: “Intercultural communication does not live in books. It lives in people. “Anastasia believed her. Or at least she wanted to. So, when Elena told her about the short cultural…

The city was a carcass. Neon signs flickered like dying stars over streets lined with broken glass, trash fires, and bodies nobody bothered to move. The cops didn’t like coming here much anymore. Too much static. Too much nothing. Too many junkies, as they…