Who is the torturer and who is the tortured?

“Has a letter arrived for me?” Billy sat on the third stair from the bottom, drumming his little hands on his Spider-Man pyjama bottoms. “Dad!”

Gerald's law practice wasn't new. He'd worked on the law review and finished near the top of his class thirty years ago. After earning his J.D., he'd gotten a master of law in taxation. His favorite cases required researching legal precedents, and he…

Photographs can create, both good and bad. They can create a way to make a living, but they can also create opportunities for black mail, divorce settlements and most of all they can create power.

Bill was queasy, short of breath, his chest tightening. He was next. How he hated this game of confession. It was harder than going to a priest, which at least allowed a measure of anonymity. True, these were friends, yet, in terms of the game, he was vastly…

When Roger opened the closet door, several guns fell forward at his feet. Most of them were rifles, weapons his stepfather had collected over three wars. Wooden bolt-action carbines, with worn leather shoulder straps, of this caliber and of that caliber. Both…

I can't show you the territory- not quite yet, not how I see it. But I do have a map, a glorious and vain construction. It gives you a glimpse, a sight. I wish you could see it all.

I would use your towel,

Andrew didn’t need oil and neither did his mother. In fact, the only reason oil was on his mother’s mind was because it was the last thing on her mind. He did not get up to get it, and she did not protest.

If you wanted to retain the ownership of said works, then you should not have died.

At street level there is a small arrow on which is printed “Museum of Numbers” that points up a long narrow staircase. There is a restaurant on the first floor. All the way up the stairs, the air is permeated with smell of fried foods

Tina saw a tear escape from beneath the frame of the man’s broken glasses. It followed the contour of his cheek until it quivered along his jaw line.

From outside it looked abandoned. We lived at the top of a dead end hill. The grass was high and brown, the bricks in the driveway were crooked, caved in. The winter was mild; rotten crabapples, half-frozen, lined the end of the road. This was my house.

You are like gasoline on the fire of my desire–you send me higher and higher into paroxysms of earth-shaking erotic explosions. Remember–the “light” catfood is the kind in the turquoise bag.

“You shouldn’t have gone inside,” he said, after she told him what had happened. “I know that’s what you’re used to doing here, with people we know. But he’s not from around here. Don’t go back over there, okay?”