Dream City and Other Stories

A painter with four months to live plays Russian roulette every morning before breakfast. A Coca-Cola can narrates its slow death inside a break room vending machine. On a deep-space station, two versions of the same man stand on opposite sides of the airlock, and one of them is lying. A woman in a café tells a stranger the next seven years of his life.

Forty-two stories. No safety nets.

This collection covers ground from literary horror to dark comedy, from spy fiction to ASMR rabbit holes, from suburban rot to a motel room where the walls write a story that no one survives reading. The connective tissue is a voice that trusts the reader enough to leave the worst parts unsaid.

Dream City and Other Stories is Cristian Mihai's first short fiction collection. For readers of Chuck Palahniuk, George Saunders, Carmen Maria Machado, and Denis Johnson.