Fiction and Drama

Martin Riker

“Ralwo Zgntry!” I gasped, because everybody’s heard of him

Christina Forrer, Turnip Growing . 2022, cotton and wool. 120 × 80". Photo by Joshua White. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, and Parker Gallery, Los Angeles. © Christina Forrer.

Author’s Note: The following tales are from Conquistadors, Adventures in Capitalism , an anachronistic, satirical work in progress about a five-hundred-year-old explorer named Morales. Many of Morales’s adventures take place in the land of a monster-people called the Capitalists. For the sake of this introduction, all you need to know about the Capitalists is that they worship youth and seek to avoid aging by grafting their heads onto reanimated bodies.…