Most discussed stories

Tumbalalaika

13931393 views66 comments44 favs

When the arguing started, their voices would get louder and louder, till they broke into my dreams. That night, I woke and listened in the dark for what felt like a very long time. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. For one thing, they never

19.

11471147 views66 comments44 favs

They made posters and hung them everywhere. With the passing days she became the photograph at its center: hair always in the same ponytail; always with the same smile

The Road

12091209 views66 comments44 favs

My mother moved her things out of my parents’ bedroom into the attic guest room. When I asked where guests would sleep, my father said, “Matthew, don’t be an asshole.”

Mine

14021402 views66 comments66 favs

My father was dating already. Her name was Shelly. She had a man-like body, buck teeth and red hair, a big forehead. I don't know what bog she climbed out of. She wanted to fill in for my mother, but I locked her out of my room. I just wanted to be sad and hold…

Hole

13541354 views66 comments44 favs

For a person you don't know, a stranger with a lot of place, you think much of him.

Resolution

11651165 views66 comments44 favs

Too often, Calvin's willful head finds its way into his hands.

Our Travels on Fire

10551055 views66 comments55 favs

We were offered mannequins that had pubic hair that grew and swirled, and could visit like a pet, and sit in your lap

It's autumn

10261026 views66 comments44 favs

Mum and Dad are dead, though I'm the only person who has noticed. They're sipping their tea in the kitchen. Dad keeps coughing up maggots. Mum's face looks like a cracked mirror: I see myself in it, broken, dark. My brothers carry on as normal. They huddle by the TV,…

The Closet

11781178 views66 comments44 favs

Her thirteen year old daughter had hung herself in the hallway closet of the old house. Now the closet was empty and unused. The door was locked.

The Princess of Fillmore Street

14391439 views66 comments55 favs

So she started sneaking into people’s houses in the middle of the night. She’d just sit in the kitchen for an hour or so, and just feel the peace. Never took anything or got into anything. Just sat there silently.

It happened

949949 views66 comments33 favs

She became a murderer in all the stages of her life she could not seem to succeed

Existential Weather Report

689689 views66 comments44 favs

I had a moment of clear inter-species ideation...

CARTOGRAPHY

11201120 views66 comments22 favs

Your brother is not really blind.

The Taming

12151215 views66 comments33 favs

N-n-never screamscold a cat.

Where Have You Gone, Honey Bear?

12131213 views66 comments66 favs

When I wake up and look to my left, will you be there with me, snoring like an asthmatic bear?

Corpses

885885 views66 comments00 favs

It was not my intent to be nosy. I just wanted to be the best neighbor I could be. Having never had anyone close growing up, I wanted to get involved and be a part of my community, such as it was. My only neigbhor was Edna Phelps. She was one…

Melanie

11681168 views66 comments00 favs

But now she was no longer the little girl.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 48

995995 views66 comments33 favs

If you shoot at them now, it'll be attempted murder or, worse, premeditated murder.

Taste

16041604 views66 comments55 favs

I. Sweet Anthill The anthill is in front of my house. It started with a cupcake I dropped on the ground, frosting first. The ants started to congregate, carrying sprinkles and cake crumbs into the deep sidewalk crack. A week…

Losing Things

13081308 views66 comments33 favs

I infuriate myself with this gift.

Sam and the Planets

16111611 views66 comments22 favs

No, she hated the vain, overweight, pathetic, glass-of-merlot-a-day, SUV piloting, Carmen-cell-phone-ring-toned, housewives and consumer sluts that charged through the store like starving hyenas through the fallen, decaying, putrid, corpses of a plague-ri

My Piper Laurie

12801280 views66 comments22 favs

Eddie meets Sarah Packard, a “college girl” played by Piper Laurie. She walks with a limp, a fact Eddie doesn’t notice at first because she’s sitting down at a diner table in a bus station. She’s alcoholic and writes poetry.

end of january

636636 views66 comments33 favs

c'mon honey let's go get stoned the night is falling where did you say we were going?

Berniece

14961496 views66 comments11 fav

"I expect 50% of the agreed fee. In cash.” I dropped the envelope at the designated spot and parked up the street.

Neural

12291229 views66 comments66 favs

Then I am wearing a brightly colored raincoat while sitting on a deck among hundreds of tiny glowing spores

Seasonal Poem

12941294 views66 comments55 favs

One of the poems in my collection, One Day Tells its Tale to Another, published December 16, 2012. Available on Amazon. My first book!

The Coward

10871087 views66 comments22 favs

George was the biggest coward alive. But he was too afraid to admit it. But that therein was his cowardice. He couldn't face the truth. He couldn't face his weakness. It made him uncomfortable, the thought that he might need to change.

It Is Not Gravity Which Pulls Us Down

20972097 views66 comments11 fav

It Is Not Gravity Which Pulls Us Down Only these tired neglected gods still wander the floor of the universe, sifting joylessly through the detritus that lies there: the fragments of fallen planets grown so heavy with sadness they had lost the will to spin…

Duet for Two Instruments of Indefinite Pitch

15911591 views66 comments77 favs

A full moon in the morning sky, the sun hasn't bothered to rise and why should it, see how unnecessary it is, left over from a sleepless night, it stayed there, in suspense, waiting to see what you could possibly get up to next. A patron saint for lost ca

the heart would have unnatural reverence

10651065 views66 comments44 favs

The heart would have unnatural reverence, exalted, bursting with evil, rolling in sloth, if it did not at once reveal its innocence. I saw you again, on the morning of the sun. It was you, or your double, or a son you might have had. Your beautiful bloo