Most read stories

Middle Age

19801980 views1818 comments1414 favs

There are no city-chewed streets,/ only white and lilac blooming dogwood trees.

Can I Take My Gun Up To Heaven?

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I thought of Ruth burrowed deep in the nest of her closet and quickly jumped into the footlocker. I nearly stopped breathing as he entered his bunker.

Circling '84

19801980 views33 comments33 favs

Other things are on my mind when the Tupperware lady says, "First, let's move your couch over by the door and the table here."

They Would Judge His Trespasses

19791979 views77 comments22 favs

They waited until the crowd was gone before making their move. Gill kept watch while Warren bypassed the lock. “You sure about this?” Gill whispered. Voices echoed down the hall of the museum.

Wounded Knee

19791979 views11 comment11 fav

“They picked me up in their spaceship about noon,” Austin Grantham says to me while pulling up an apple crate to use as a stool.

The not so great Popsicle caper

19791979 views2222 comments88 favs

"Ha ha!" I said triumphantly, "I've got some left and you don't!"

Summer Reading

19791979 views55 comments33 favs

The summer everyone read Faulkner, I read Hemingway. Out of spite.

On The Sly

19781978 views44 comments44 favs

She was a sucker punch.

Tatters

19781978 views99 comments88 favs

They sat on the couch, and he tried to unbutton her buttons, but she fended him off.

Berthier Door

19781978 views44 comments33 favs

On Day 1122 at 4:14 AM the door which has remained since installation firmly glued to the masonry behind opens and a man emerges blinking shielding his eyes against fine stinging snow.

Traveling Lightheaded

19781978 views44 comments11 fav

He lit my cigarette even though he didn't want me to smoke. Buying me drinks all night, he didn't complain, but he thought I drank too much.

This is Why We Can Never Have Nice Things

19771977 views66 comments55 favs

At age eleven, I murder the coffee table. I gouge with every available implement: thumbtacks, Lefty scissors, the plastic hand of my Barbie accomplice (who really should have known better). It is a slow death. In the end, there is nowhere to hide the body. When I am…

Light Shot Water

19771977 views99 comments44 favs

Where I grew up, you did not venture casually into ocean waters.

Squishy

19771977 views44 comments22 favs

Martin named it “Squishy” for two reasons. The first reason was because it was the noise it made when it came out of the hole in his basement. The second is because it’s what it did to Grandfather...

Prompts

19771977 views1616 comments1313 favs

Write a poem in which your father is a dog and you are his leash.

Life Story

19771977 views99 comments77 favs

A man lives with a woman he loves enough to live with, but not enough to marry and not enough for kids. He knows he could love others enough to marry, enough for kids, but he's not the kind of man to find those women when he's with this woman.Sometimes “love”…

Eighty-eight

19771977 views77 comments66 favs

She realised that things you can't prove can be more intimate than the things you know to be true.

To Kill a Deer

19771977 views33 comments33 favs

On September 12th, 2011, the ban on deer hunting became official. Apparently, the hunting and killing of deer had become too cruel. The ban had been a long time in the making. Ever since man began hunting deer way back in the day—somewhere between a fe

Breakfast Dance - a 55 word story

19771977 views1414 comments66 favs

The handsome man at the opposite table swivels his head at the tall cool slim blonde entering the breakfast cafe. The ordinary woman sitting with him adjusts her chair accordingly. She pretends to ignore her husband's distraction, smoothes her hair, licks her…

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

19771977 views55 comments11 fav

The light against the nylon walls of the tent gets me feeling a little down. The air's wet inside, but it's warm. The whole world outside is creaking and chirping, everything that wakes up with the dawn's first tepid blue light does so and starts making n

MONSOON

19771977 views55 comments33 favs

a beautiful cool quiet day

Husks

19761976 views22 comments22 favs

She would have moved on to the next guy in the next bar, the one who looked like danger on a stick.

Exasperation Management

19761976 views1313 comments1313 favs

We honor fierce, quick, cunning/ thought-in-action types

The Mitzvah

19761976 views1717 comments1111 favs

There were only two students in the sculpture class: an 86 year-old Jewish woman and myself.

Better Days

19761976 views66 comments55 favs

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.

Zumba, Meet Depression

19761976 views2121 comments1212 favs

The decision is made. I am going to a Zumba class. What better way to achieve behavior modification than to leave my TV and fuzzy bear slippers behind for some hot Latin aerobics in a strip-mall? I try to pull my hair into a ponytail that will make the two inches of…

Anti

19761976 views99 comments55 favs

“What do you call this place?” I didn't really want to talk much in there. For some reason, talking felt too—linear. The words seemed to have a kind of reverberation into associations that seemed somewhat meaningless at the time.”

We Threw These At Each Other

19761976 views55 comments22 favs

Jimmy wore a tie to top that torn green tee he toted every day, every other. He smelled of dirt, said he had a feeling we had watermelon somewhere since he caught a whiff from his room inside his house across the street.

How I Made My Fortune

19761976 views00 comments00 favs

At the time I first went to work for Mr. Byron my family was in a sorrowful state. My dad, much as I can recall, was one of those roving kinds, called himself a carpenter or contractor, depending on the kind of job he was aspiring to, and was subject to f

Coffee Shop

19761976 views2424 comments1717 favs

He wore his hip in his hips, his lipsShe wanted to know if he would lick the edgesWhen he pulled the coffee cup from his mouthA bit of foam clung to his moustacheShe watched it there, wondering if he wouldTwirl it off with his fingersOr lick it, his tongue darting out like…