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This is the Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this week's episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Saeed Sarifizade read his story,

Nocturnal Creatures from the May 5th, 2025 issue of the magazine.

Serafizade is the author of several plays, the memoir when skateboards will be free,

and the story collections brief encounters with the enemy and American estrangement,

a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, which was published in 2021.

Now here's Saeed Saraphizade.

Nocturnal creatures.

It's the spring after the bedbug scare has finally abated for good when I pull up in front of the bakery, which I won't name,

but it's the one right off Exit 17. This is my last stop of the day, and the owner is waiting for me outside,

standing in the early morning darkness, hands on his hips, flower on his apron, white breath

coming out of his mouth, saying I was supposed to have been here an hour ago.

Dispatcher told you wrong, I tell him. In situations like these, I always blame it on the dispatcher.

But the owner is right. I'm way behind schedule because I've been crisscrossing the city all night,

trying to cover as much territory as I can before dawn, since commercial properties

can't be done during business hours for obvious reasons. Things were better during the

bedbug scare when I was earning a premium for same-day service and getting nothing but respect

from non-professionals caught up in a mass panic over the possibility of their property being

...