Kakorrhaphiophobia

RBM has a new short story, "Kakorrhaphiophobia," in the current issue of Otis Nebula. An excerpt:

This had happened once before, during his freelancing days in Washington, before he went back to teaching—in the vast, unfinished basement on Georgia Avenue that he’d shared with a luggage boy from the Marriott. Feral cats had ripped holes in their window screens. Benjamin awoke to the sound of his laundry money being poured into a sock. The boy’s brow was glistening, and he held a finger to his lips. Benjamin thought he was being robbed—was about to offer the boy some real money—when the sock took flight. It only hung near the water pipes for a half-second. Just long enough for something fast and brown to seize hold, then crash to the linoleum, where it flapped for a while. The boy said he’d used the same trick back home, in Nigeria. Benjamin wasn’t sure if it could be true, but it made his column that week—all about harmless Chiroptera, his place in literature and his good work in your backyard.

For more from ON6, check out this week's review from NewPages.com.

Photo of the Day

September 22, 2012 -- Sunset over the lower Missouri on this, the first day of autumn.

The View from North Platte

August 12, 2012 -- Scenes real and hallucinatory from the Fort Cody Trading Post in North Platte, Nebraska, and Scout's Rest, William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody's nearby ranch, which housed livestock for the showman's infamous Wild West.

Photo of the Day

August 5, 2012 -- The view from Washington's Clark County Fair and "The World's Premier Canine Aquatics Competition."

The View from Rainier

August 1, 2012 -- Pictures from Camp Muir and the summit of Washington's Mount Rainier via Disappointment Cleaver. There's a 2005 essay on RBM and family's last attempt at Rainier over at this dispatch.

The View from Paradise

July 17, 2012 -- Pictures from Washington's lower Lewis River and Paradise Point. There's another look at the Lewis over at this dispatch.

The View from the Gorge

Above: Oregon's Mount Defiance (in fog) and Washington's Dog Mountain (in bloom), which form opposing sides of the Columbia River Gorge. Climbers training for higher ground often attempt the "double D" -- ascents of both peaks in a single day. But distractions abound: lilies, columbine, and endangered snails, among other wildlife.

Photo of the Day

July 3, 2012 -- The view from Washington's Lewis and Clark Highway and Oregon's Biglow Canyon Wind Farm.

The View from Highway 12

June 30, 2012 -- Pictures from western North Dakota and eastern Montana's particularly lonely stretch of U.S. Route 12, an east-west corridor whose railroading and homesteading history is masterfully chronicled in Jonathan Raban's Bad Land: An American Romance (1997).

Photo of the Day

June 29, 2012 -- An auto shop in Lemmon, South Dakota, echoes the prayers of residents across the fire-ravaged Mountain West, including the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, just over the Montana state line, where crews struggled against heavy winds and a blaze just 5 percent contained on Friday.

The View from Pine Ridge

June 28, 2012 -- The noonday colors at Feather on Head Cemetery and a nearby tipi on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, or Wazí Aháŋhaŋ Oyáŋke, in western South Dakota.

The View from Churchill Downs

June 15, 2012 -- Juliet's Promise, a fourth generation descendant of Secretariat, wins Race 7 and RBM $10 on an unremarkable Friday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. The story of six furlongs, as told upstairs:

The View from Clay County

May 26, 2012 -- History rolls on at a memorial outside the county courthouse in Vermillion, South Dakota, where VFW Post 3061 will hold an observance on Monday.

Photo of the Day

May 16, 2012 -- Off Highway 19 and a bend in the Missouri River, South Dakota's corn is already enjoying the warmest year on record.

The View from Yankton

May 12, 2012 -- For the annual Humane Society fundraiser in Yankton, South Dakota, a rancher from Tyndall brings his menagerie: exotic pheasants, spitting alpacas, and a month-old, one-humped camel.