BEN MARCUS - Flame Alphabet

What is left of civilization when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love?

A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children’s speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction.
 
With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther, who laughs at her parents’ sickness, unaware that in just a few years she, too, will be susceptible to the language toxicity. But Sam and Claire find it isn’t so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition.

Check out this amazing short film based on the book.

Ben Marcus is the author of Notable American Women and The Age of Wire and String. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. The recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he is a Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia University and lives in New York City.

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Acquired by Badgerdog in 2003 and relaunched in March 2006, Austin-based American Short Fiction publishes short fiction that is wild, heartfelt, innovative, new. The magazine introduces you to writers you should know this minute, and stories that'll stick with you for a lifetime. Work from ASF has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, New Stories of the Southwest, and Dzanc's Best of the Web.

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