Keila Cone-Uemura is a writer, actor, and musician based in Los Angeles, CA. She is currently working on a short story collection and a ghost-filled musical.
As a big surprise for her birthday, I gave in and bought the dog she’d been wanting for a long time. A frisky little caramel-colored dachshund she immediately named Fredo after the weak Corleone brother in The Godfather, her favorite movie. I thought it an odd name but it was her choice and her dog.
In the South, on the nights of a sweltering summer, we children like to sleep in the middle of the road. No cars pass by overnight; everyone plops their water-cooled bamboo beds outside, and the moment of excitement arrives. Ah, the corpse drivers! Ah, the Spider Demon King! Ah, the Milky Way!
His body had been in the trunk some hours already when she began to feel him next to her in the cab as well. She couldn’t see him at first, could only sense he was there. But soon the hair on her right arm stood up and the air beside her began to shimmer. Before she began to see him fully, she whipped her gaze away.