Most read stories

Turbidity

20382038 views3939 comments1414 favs

Where seldom is heard an encouraging word

Perversion

20382038 views77 comments55 favs

“It’s a sad thing,” I said, “when a man has to suffer just for getting a little on the side.”

Zombies Calling

20382038 views11 comment22 favs

The zombie apocalypse was long foretold as a rather exciting bit of bother involving shotguns and chainsaws, but the reality of it is rather depressingly boring.

The Mosaic Thief

20382038 views66 comments11 fav

Bit by bit I was traveling away, we thought. Maybe I’d join myself, all together, in Toronto. Or in an industrial coffee can. Or in the closet. “Check the closet,” I pointed.

The Silence of Harold

20382038 views1919 comments1111 favs

It's been sixteen days since I spoke with another soul. I don't mind much, but I know enough about people to know most would think I'm mighty odd. Muriel, for example. She'd be pissed as all get out. …

Upon Learning the Fetus Has Fingernails

20382038 views1111 comments44 favs

Upon learning the fetus has fingernails, Missy texts her boyfriend: It has nails! He won’t reply because he’s just left for war, but she does it just the same.

Avatar Of Chaos

20372037 views55 comments55 favs

He has one good eye and is missing the other. The socket of his missing eye squints with a disturbing and unfathomable insight.

Polaris

20372037 views1010 comments77 favs

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,

Do you dream?

20372037 views1515 comments55 favs

Megalomania is a kind of backwards leprosy. It rots your insides out while your skin glistens and grows tighter around your bones.

Everyone Is Going Away

20372037 views88 comments44 favs

“I don’t know what’s going on there,” Hank, who hated his name and wanted a more Biblical name because those names (Jeremiah! Matthew! David!)—although common—sound ominous, said as he pointed up to the top of the apartment building that housed the whores

Not Tired

20372037 views99 comments44 favs

Three hours isn't that long.

The Tree is Farther to the Man

20372037 views1313 comments1111 favs

I am constricted by rings. The weight of self crushes me.

Time

20372037 views22 comments11 fav

time. Night after night he's up, restless. What if she knew his plans? If only he'd bypass his miscalculations and slip through

Tatters

20372037 views99 comments88 favs

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

Papadad: a portrait

20372037 views1212 comments1313 favs

Papadad has one good eye. The other fell out during a rant and has since been replaced by a rifle scope, which he uses to scrutinise enemies.——Papadad is an authority on everything, even topics he has not researched. He expatiates on these at the dinner table,…

Happiness

20372037 views1717 comments99 favs

Can you find happiness in the middle of a kidney stone attack?

Letter to the Bean Factory

20372037 views66 comments22 favs

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

Serial

20372037 views88 comments44 favs

He beats the girl, stabs her 22 times, rapes her, then uses his fingertips to push her orbital sockets into the back of her head before killing her. At trial, he laughs about whether or not there…

Contagious Blinking

20372037 views22 comments22 favs

He pulls on his wispy goatee and shifts his weight a few times from one foot to the other. That doesn’t help. It rarely does, to be honest.

Disparity

20372037 views1313 comments1010 favs

sacred ground bleached with the salt of bitter tears

Ribs

20362036 views77 comments77 favs

The moun­tains of humil­ity went silent, / the rain of regency dried its eyes

Sidereal

20362036 views2929 comments1616 favs

"...they ran shirtless like pagans under southern stars."

The Man Whose Wife Lived in His Neck

20362036 views2323 comments1515 favs

This is the story of the man whose wife lived in his neck. Every morning, he would turn to her and say, "Hello, Sweetheart. How was your night?" and she would answer, Brilliant! What else?

Aloha

20362036 views1010 comments99 favs

It’s a little known fact that eels are often lost in translation – only the spotted variety, not the striped or the common and certainly not the electric.... I think about that lovely hippie girl and her knowledge of eels, sometimes.

When Borders was Alive and Well

20362036 views88 comments77 favs

I'd been working for two years as a barista in a Starbuck's in a giant, two-story Borders in an upscale mall on Rt. 355, a main artery between Washington D.C., and Frederick, Maryland. I'd finished my M.F.A in 2000 and was trying to build up steam for more grad…

The Burning Gulf

20362036 views88 comments44 favs

None of us ever thought this would happen.

Body to go

20362036 views44 comments11 fav

I’m squatting naked over the hand mirror, feet cold on the terrazzo floor, looking at my winking arsehole.

Imago Mundi

20352035 views1212 comments99 favs

in which creative destruction holds the heads of entire populations beneath the surface of the water in bathtubs until the bubbles stop

THERE IS AN I.V. OF THE TIMES I HAVE THOUGHT, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT" AND IT IS SWELLING MY VEINS

20352035 views1010 comments77 favs

god bless my shapeless head. we are good at becoming older. i feel incredibly negative all the time.

Holding Hands in Public

20352035 views55 comments00 favs

Take my hand. Take my hand and we will sail through the atmosphere leaving trails of rainbow speckled life written in musical notes behind us. We can go anywhere you want, whenever you wish. The moon in 1974. I hear the earth looks gorgeous during the seventies.…