x-r-a-y magazine, Author at X-R-A-Y

GOTH TACOS by Paul Stinson

January 21, 2026 · Micros

Tom wore black jeans, black Bauhaus t-shirt, no makeup. Three al pastor on corn, no onions. Clayre wore the long black lace skirt, black and yellow zebra top, black lipstick. Two barbacoa on flour. Tom was a lab assistant, Clayre a speech therapist. Funny, Tom had a daughter named Claire, with an i, a fourth grade sweetheart whom he saw on weekends. Funny, Clayre had a brother named Tom, a Grade-A turd who did real estate in Phoenix. Was Tom the coolest, best looking guy at Goth Tacos that Wednesday? Nope. But was he kind enough and safe-seeming enough to…

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YOU MAY APPLAUD NOW: JOSEPH COWARD ON ‘JESUS CHRIST KINSKI’ BY BENJAMIN MYERS

January 20, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

Klaus Nakszynski was born in Germany in 1926, and within a few short decades became everything from Nazi conscript, to piss-drinking mental patient, to one of the most prolific and notorious stage-screen presences of the twentieth century. Despite everything he was as an actor, Kinski (excising sections of his name after returning to Germany from a Colchester POW camp) became better known for his psychopathic behaviours both at work and recreationally. He screamed at Werner Herzog for an hour and a half over a cold cup of coffee; he once stalked one of his psychiatric nurses for three days before…

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ROAD HEAD by Lila-Rose Beckford

January 19, 2026 · Fiction

Leroy wakes up in a desert turnout, contorted in his truck bed like he tried to hold himself together in his sleep. His head throbs. His mouth tastes like blood. The sun is already climbing. The sky is too clean, too wide. No eyes for miles. The desert has stripped him thin, but that’s the point. It’s burning off the wrong parts, leaving only what his wife will recognize when he goes home. Athena wakes in a guest bedroom with white plaster walls, glass doors, and a rug that was woven by someone else’s hand. The lovers have the…

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DEATH DRIVE by Quinn Broussard

January 16, 2026 · Fiction

One night, I text my boyfriend, Next time we have sex, I want you to hit me and tell me I’m worthless. He doesn’t respond to it. In the morning, I drink black coffee and don’t eat. He texts me between my classes, Come over later, and so in the evening, I sit on his couch and watch him watch sports. It’s a different one for each season and I can never keep track when one starts and another begins – it doesn’t follow logic, that the Super Bowl is in February and they’re still in these same thin jerseys…

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THE HOUSE AT THE EDGE OF THE FOREST BURNS by Timo Teräsahjo

January 15, 2026 · Fiction

The boy stood barefoot in the snow, staring at the house, a blaze of light in the darkness. It seemed like all there was in the world. The living room window gaped open; green curtains fluttered in the wind, oddly soft and warm. The shouting had stopped. Only the murmur of the spruces remained. He closed his eyes and imagined waves crashing on smooth rocks, the air salted with mist. He was very young, not even ten. His mother had pushed him through the window, and he did not know where to go. The front door banged open. His father…

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FOLLOWING THE THREADS: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN HASKELL by Rebecca Gransden

January 14, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

How to move. John Haskell’s Trying to Be (Fiction Collective Two, 2025) plots the potentials in life by means of undefinable and expressively changeable essays. Always shifting, the collection weaves around the central conundrums of existence, and in so doing implicates itself in this unceasing mystery. At once a humane interrogation of headspace and exploration in what it means to pass through the world as a physical being, Haskell’s work teems with the presence of the engaged observer, caught in the maelstrom we sometimes call reality. I spoke with John about this slippery and enigmatic book. Rebecca Gransden: You…

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OBJECTS FROM FILMS by Marcus Merritt

January 12, 2026 · Comics

Ghost World (2001) The Terminator (1984) The Thing (1982) I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018) Crumb (1984) Marnie (1964) The Hit (1984)

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BLOND CANYON by Ariel McCleese

January 7, 2026 · Creative Nonfiction

It happened in four parts: 1. Driving on the 134, a whirlpool of leaves in the fast lane. Languid, suspension of air and oaks. 100 Animals! sound book shrill in the backseat. Mommy! Guess! A tapir? Lying in the lukewarm pool of the Los Angeles Zoo. Its heat radiant. Ladybug? A series of noises chosen at random, a constellation of voiceover sounds. A friend demonstrated once. The way she recorded Target commercials from her coat closet. Toucan? How does the color of its beak translate sonically? Mommy! Guess! Should I have taken her to school today? The car buffeting back…

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BIG KARMA COMIX by Mahendra Singh

January 6, 2026 · Fiction

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VACUUM by Filip Jakab

January 5, 2026 · Fiction

“Choke me!” Vinnie yells. His skaterboi Gen-Z body—a pale, rampant, mangled flesh to be further detested, desolated, deprived. Though the flesh and bone he otherwise soothes with a daily intake of smoothies that include collagen, selected antioxidants, and protein powders. He drinks a lot of purified water. He’s one of the lost by-products of his generation. He nourishes his Promethean body to the max so Sean can destroy it. He pumps it up twice, three times a week, with an unfuckable gym bro who goes by Dixon in the city center. Post-pump, they take dumb selfies (he never shows them to Sean)….

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