11. A FABLE IN SERVICE OF HASTENING THE END OF ALL BORDERS

Told in the second person, ‘A Fable in Service of Hastening the End of All Borders’ asks the reader imagine working as a teenage grocery bagger at a dreamlike Canadian borderland supermarket. The strip mall that houses the supermarket suffers a constant onslaught of drastic transformations: the manager begins building a transparent dome that straddles the border; the subsized housing where the protagonist grew up is demolished; a studly co-worker opens a male brothel; the frozen yogurt shop revamps itself as a smoothie bar; a barbecue champion and an entrepreneur toting a portable rock wall both set up shop in the parking lot. All the while, the bagger struggles with bulimia and grows increasingly obsessed with miniatures.

A finalist for the Calvino Prize, ‘A Fable in Service of Hastening the End of All Borders’ is featured in my forthcoming fiction collection, The Story of How All Animals Are Equal & Other Tales. Click HERE to pre-order it for only $15.95!