2068 7 4
|
The things we do for books, she thought.
|
206832
|
The sand felt warm, the way it usually was on Saturday afternoons in Seaside Heights; face down on the beach under a hot July sun that burned my back and shoulders
|
20681710
|
Even if your heart is as large as a small car, your tongue as heavy as two grown men—even then—you will have to carry it with you wherever you go.
|
206831
|
Picking up a perfect stranger—perfect meaning dead, in this case—and shaping him into the man you’d want him to be is not so easy.
|
206800
|
Madam Mayweather heard the laughter stop and the copy of Jean-Pierre burst into smoke. Her silence was intense. Nobody in the auditorium knew what to expect. No one dared to say a single word.
|
206800
|
Jack thinks I should carry a loaded gun in my purse.
|
206773
|
He had an addiction to elevating himself to higher levels of potential: some would call this ambition.
|
2067129
|
Some time ago, I began to write you letters with the idea of helping your newspaper become a more complete map of our little shared world.
|
206700
|
Sometimes I have really violent dreams where I smash Libby’s face in with a liquor bottle, a brick, a mounted boar’s head... really whatever my brain makes available to me. I always wake up satisfied.
|
2066117
|
I walk back home, alone and without the bus fare. Distancing myself from the shadows that float interminably against the drowsy sun. Where frightened boys often roam, going in circles against the long lines of epitaphs and gravestones. Puzzling…
|
2066117
|
I am so happy to see winter almost gone
|
2066107
|
Sometimes after bookbinding for a few hours at the hand-sewing table, Jillie would, after scraping her knife too roughly over the glue of an old book's spine, feel not like a resurrector of literature, as she should, but a killer. Not a calculating or
|
206663
|
I am at a wedding with a new girlfriend. The bride is her old college roommate. I don't really know anyone else here. The wedding is being held at a huge estate, located on the edge of enormous cliffs that overlook the ocean. Despite the danger of this precarious…
|
206600
|
La revancha! The rematch between the great matador and the impossible bull was set for La Fiesta de la Objeto Inamovible. Red-lettered posters announced the event on shuttered tiendas and busy bus stops and papered-over graffiti on the city’s walls for al
|
206510
|
Inside my high-rise studio apartment there are only three locations where Crane Man can't see me. The bathroom is one—although he watches me go in and he watches me come out. Crane Man does a lot of watching. Sometimes it seems he spends more time looking…
|
206500
|
The old mage said nothing. She did not even return the complement. All she had was disgust in her eyes as she looked at the grown men and women. To her they had no hearts.
|
20651710
|
Can you write a 250-word story without using the letter "e"?
Ruth's back is curving forwards, folding, softly caving into tomorrow.
|
206521
|
He had expected more -- at least his grandfather's classic Packard touring car.
|
20641315
|
|
206432
|
The Bird King suffers from phantom head syndrome. Ever since his decapitation by a critic, he has felt pain where his head used to be. Sometimes it wakes him in the night. It's so excruciating, he fumbles for a saw. But alas! there's nothing to chop off.He's seen every…
|
2064175
|
I try to help my pet-mouse by dangling cheese from a piece of string in front of him. Or by making meow sounds. Sometimes, my pet-mouse wins, sometimes the hamster with the great body.
|
20641913
|
memories that no longer make sense
|
20642718
|
1. The ghost that photographs my wife and me has a peculiar sense of lighting. In this one, we are sitting at the kitchen table of our old apartment. The table is made of glass. There is nothing on the table except our elbows. She has lowered her head between her…
|
206443
|
A great doubt had shut out the light inside us, but each of us called for our lover at the end, and she was generous. Carrying us along inside her over vast distances, chilling our soul with sudden terrible flashes of light.
|
206332
|
In row nine, there was a lady on the window seat. Seeing the potential of space between us, I asked, “Mind if I take this one?”
“Not at all” she said as if she hadn't a friend in the world, apart from the poor bastard now sitting in seat 9D.
|
206322
|
Her face had that strange preserved quality Maybelle saw in many aging Boomer women — like an old toy never removed from its packaging.
|
2063139
|
Dear Fictionaut Family,Some of you may recognize my name and remember reading my work, some of you may have joined more recently and be wondering what the hell I'm doing addressing you directly. I began writing on Fictionaut in 2010, during four years as I was fragmenting…
|
206320
|
What the heck to believe in??
|
206230
|
The first photo above shows plainly: five children dressed in suits and dresses. There are three girls. Each girl wears a yellow sundress with chiffon ribbons. The boys have been terrorizing them--the girls, not the dresses.
|
206241
|
Refuse to go to the church service, even though you already missed the funeral. Tell his mother something came up. Call his phone over and over, just to hear his voice, until his mother asks you to stop. Make a recording of his voicemail. Delete it an
|
