1955 1 1
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Whispers flew, like wild darts across the room. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Right then, it wasn’t my job to figure things out; it was my job to cry.
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195510
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Elin and I had religious differences about the garage. To her the garage required regular sweeping and organization--it was an extension of our house. Elin believed dust and mold to be manifestations of inner sin. I insisted that they were agents of evolu
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195410
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The rustling of the dry leaves when he moved even slightly sounded like thunder to him, and he was sure if any of the other kids from the neighborhood got too close, it was the noise that would end up giving him away.
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195441
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She comes in with her white bag with its floral patterns scattered, almost accidentally, all around it
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195474
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Juniper Mélange was a cat person, not a dog person. Truly detested when she perceived falseness in another person. She wore glasses and drank tea. Had dark straight hair and light skin. She dressed conservatively and would watch the sky most days. She wou
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195411
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When I was six, my father brought home a fishbowl. Look out for the inhabitants, he said. You can play Neptune in their microcosm of the sea.
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1953107
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Things get lost in Big John, too. I see the other guys throw jokes about his size at his body that wedge their way into his armpits or into the wrinkles of his laugh lines and disappear. I’m not sure if it all disappears to remind us how small we are,
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1953135
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She slipped into a silky sheath dress, and stepped into black sequined heels just as the doorbell rang. Her date had arrived to take her to his much touted Art opening in town. Reaching under the bathroom sink for a final mist of hair spray she realized too late…
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19531415
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There he was, naked and covered in green mud
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195385
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We were old. Wind came in with small threats and played games with drapes. A print of orchids and some other green affair that looked to me like kiwis. Sadie was arranging some items on a desk and I noticed there was a cricket on the window. I was thinking…
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195311
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I spent the whole day at Oliveira's, writing furiously in my notebooks. The words came pouring out. Just before seven, Darrell picked me up. I grew anxious driving down to Parker's studio because it was in a bad area on the border between Oakland
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19532212
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The drinking will continue/
until morale improves
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195322
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She hated the noiseless dying sound they made as he stuck the hook through their eyes. She always wanted for them to scream, but they never did. They didn’t even blink.
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195266
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When I wake up and look to my left, will you be there with me, snoring like an asthmatic bear?
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195222
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Marion had decided to stop whenever she came upon Amarillo. It was close to two a.m. when she pulled into the motel parking lot. Momma, read the nametag on the woman at reception. Her face was illuminated by a TV. Her hair curlers were illuminated by the lone desk lamp…
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195200
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My novel-in-stories, NAN, is now available as an ebook for $6.99. Thanks to everyone who read the first 7 published stories here on Fictionaut.
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195161
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Bearing the smell of paper on her fingertips. Ink in her hair.
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195111
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The red laser flashes. He asks if I have an Ace Rewards card. I can't even answer because my beans have stopped jumping. I wonder if the laser light harmed them. Then one jumps and another, and I hand the boy some money, suddenly very fond of my beans.
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195121
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Paper Bird, Devotchka, TV On The Radio
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195100
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His footing unsure and his clothes covered in vomit, he grabs the railing and stumbles up the three steps. He pulls off his shirt, finds a cleaner area on the puke-covered garment, wipes sweat off his forehead, dripping wet from the humid, stormy night, a
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195110
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Almost on cue, Xavier emerges and is in the vendor’s face. “X,” as he is known around here, is indoctrinating the obvious newbie on the merits of showing up earlier and the logistics of placeholders and markers.
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195101
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Imagine instead the skater's lean feat, the toes which, honestly, may represent 25% of the entire length. The superb way she slips them into the boots. They smell like truffles.
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1951159
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She tells Tuesday's lover that there's nothing wrong with cheap thrills without anesthesia,
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195162
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The figure was covered in a light blue chenille bathrobe, splayed out on her back on the floor by the glass door, her hair done up in large curlers, a slipper lying askew by her left foot. Richie crouched near the face and the rancid flame of bourbon lea
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19513018
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I dreamed that coffee grounds had spilled on my Buffet. There was another clarinet, a silver one, that belonged to a man not in the room, that was clean of debris.
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195110
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The schedule fell smoothly into place: After Imogene went home at the end of the day, Calvin locked the office door, then he and Rosalie marched into the examination room and she flossed him.
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195122
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I know it’s nobody’s fault, and that one thing had nothing to do with the other, because it was this way for me since I was born; they just didn’t figure it out for a while that with one of my ears I could hardly hear, and with the other, I couldn
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195096
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I’m maybe only four. Not smoking cigarettes found in street gutters yet. That will come the next year, when I’m five. Maybe when I’m six, and Andy’s five, my pal from across the street. That’s my tricycle parked behind this pack of kids that look to be ne
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195060
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“In the process, I’ve created this memory track. Yet had the sense that I had to make fixed memories move as illusion, that they move as illusion.”
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195022
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Her face had that strange preserved quality Maybelle saw in many aging Boomer women — like an old toy never removed from its packaging.
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