1943 4 5
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Between the wars, I hung around in an air-conditioned room. It was tiny, and I was shoved to the back, but after living outside on another man's back for months of bullets and bombs, I welcomed the stuffiness. White paint kept close walls from reminding me of the trenches'…
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194312
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Phil was scared.
Not of his own shadow, but of the three men from ConAgra who'd dropped a duffel bag of green outside his den the week before.
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19432118
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When I died, she said, she was going to have me cremated and put my ashes in the cats’ litter box.
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1943215
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You got a lot of people, out there
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19421312
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He introduced me to key lime pie, and for this alone I would have loved him forever. It was an innocent time for me, and I was easy to please.
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19421313
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We honor fierce, quick, cunning/
thought-in-action types
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194200
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Seven black and orange Tortoise-shell kittens nursed in a crate the day Sue returned from rehab, to her parent's Atlanta home.
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194273
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Recently I think I became someone else.
When the alarm clock rings in the morning, it sounds sharper than usual; getting up, my feet don't seem to quite touch the floor; looking into my bathroom mirror, my face seems to be melting, sliding, my eyes dri
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19422010
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A sardonic moon/
surveys our plight and cackles.
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194200
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She turned to the window, staring into the dark. A smile crept to her lips and she laughed softly. “No, we can’t. I’m Mexican and we speak Spanish.” The smile vanished and she moved to leave. “No sé qué decir… sólo puedo llorar. Nada
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194164
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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
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194191
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Stupid's rising up, I see. Melting all the intellect. I before E, except after C, but that's not how the alphabet goes.
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194141
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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
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194165
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I peeled off a hundred. For the screwdriver, I said. The kid shook his head, made a pushing-away gesture. You need it worse’n I do right now, he said.
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194100
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Caroline smiles before reaching out to touch a shapeless shadow dancing on the wall, closing her eyes as the bumps in the primer serve brail to oncoming dreams.
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194142
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The stern tone of the chairwoman made him miss his mother, the snap of her accusations, the sting of her belt on the backs of his legs.
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19411712
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A starved hunchbacked figure covered in blanket gently steers a one eyed dog along with him. A four legged shadow serving as his longtime companion against the all-consuming vacuum of the universe. A friend for all times.A thin scar runs from his cheekbone to…
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194186
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"Love, against the dying of the light." (An unusual story about George Whitman, former owner of the revered & beloved Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris, France.)
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194153
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a beautiful cool quiet day
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1940138
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There is a price. It's on the back. If you turn it around you'll see. It isn't expensive. Everything's okay.
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194094
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Where I grew up, you did not venture casually into ocean waters.
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19401613
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Write a poem in which your father is a dog and you are his leash.
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1940115
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She wears a green and pink bikini and walks real slow, poking her chest out so people will notice her.
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1940139
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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…
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194074
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The things we do for books, she thought.
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194032
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You call the shit in this paper news? ‘Dog Accidentally Shoots Man With His Own Gun, Swedish Man Bursts Into Flames on Train Platform, The Truth About Elvis's Hidden Extraterrestrial Daughter.' Seriously? Enough about Elvis already.
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193920
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A Vicious Deer
The man came across the hall to talk to us.
He was buying some paintings.
He had a white deer on a leash.
Fosca (our Malamute) said: “That's a vicious deer.”
She kept putting her paw on its shoulder.
I said: “You bet
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193932
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... her hair spills like spinach all the way down to her backpack, the top pocket where the bowl and the cinnamon estrange themselves from the coffee.
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19392719
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On the bus I sat like an ounce.
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193921
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Enter Tipitina’s – the rotation hole
where electric, shoeless uncles
allocate their copper goulashes
to catch white dripwater.
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