Most read stories

A Few Introductory Words

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And without further ado, The Author.

Not Lao-tzu's Yellow Brick Road, xxviii - xxxvii

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master carvers do not reduce with carving.

The Fergus Incident

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Fergus Winston, a former accountant from New York, finds himself mixed up in the middle of a trafficking operation in small town Iowa.

A Circus Never to Return

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But on arrival Darlene was in no prompt mood to undress. "There's some ugly sumpthin' out there along the fence, looks like it's gnawin' on sumpthin' dead."

A Clean Tent

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“No,” he says. A simple lie. “I -” He pushes the sleeping bag off of his legs. Their getaway reset was a mistake.

The Men Who Forgot Math and Poetry

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"They treat us like shit," the mathematician said. "They think they can just take us and electrocute us and drown us."

Grand Union

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She suggested just moving in together. A lot less constrained by convention she, on occasion, did not wear a bra.

Mick Dever

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The P-36 used for gunnery exercises was twitchy and stubborn...

Free Time

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The desk calendar was brilliant, unused. The problems with it didn't begin until March.

MYTHO-THERAPY ON THE BLINK

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Once upon a time, not so long ago in Los Angeles, Jack and Jill Woodman’s father remarried.

ABSALOM

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He was still on the ground...

Cake

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A little poem

Swimming with Whales

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The plan was this: We would take our first vacation. My husband and I would take our 2 ½-year-old son Ethan and 13-month-old son Jonas to Mystic, Connecticut, a 90 minute drive from our home outside of Boston. We would stay at the Hilton, which was right near the Aquarium,…

Hygiene

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I peed on Rick’s toothbrush. I nearly repented and cleansed it with hydrogen peroxide in the middle of the night. But I didn’t.

Itch

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Clayton had a grin like the hand of a beast that stretched as long as her gravel road...

Algae Freunden

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She had a strange name which I am ashamed/ To have forgotten, seven times, maybe nine,/ Her lips transgressors, wet with sourapple ...

A D O N I S

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They sprinkled me in the holes of Auburn Maine. They covered me in grain, and salmon colored sand. My shell had swirls of chartreuse, and chocolate painted on it. I was made from glass and Gods left eye. Picked and sorted through, we all landed into a tiny paper bag…

The Cruelest Man

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He was arrested for a horrible crime. It took more than three weeks to identify the body. The newspapers were vague so as not to terrify anyone. He hung his head low as he pled guilty.

Luc

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Her wrinkles came into focus, the sort of old woman's face photographed for coffee tables and art galleries and corporate boardrooms, for prize juries and grant selection committees, and Luc searched his formidable memory for an exact match. Over the long, tedious…

The Kiss

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"Dude!" James smacked Peter's head. "Don't be a jerk. Did you get a look at her or not?" Peter said, "I didn't really see her face. Is she hot? Do you wanna kiss her face?"

Arcana Magi Zero Arc 3 - c.4

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Alysia stretched her left hand out at Kurai, and the electricity connected with her fingertips like beacon.

Heroic

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This is an older story that was inspired by research on naming conventions while trying to find record of my own ancestors in the Ukraine. I did not find them. Instead I was inspired to write this.

Ghost Questions

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What if I never feel like a real artist? What does it even mean to be a "real" artist? What if nobody ever cares about what I make?

Interview With a Pimp

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He went to the switchboard and rang one of the rooms. I moved away to a discreet distance so he could make his pitch in private, and soon he came back to the desk front. "He d-didn't like it much, b-but he said to s-send you up. Room 412."

Unprecedented weirdness

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The weird thing was that standing here with himself, or what appeared to be himself, he had got so self-conscious that it was almost paralyzing.

The man-faced boy

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And so the man-faced boy grew alone, knowing little of kindness and love. As he grew, he explored the limits of his cold world; crawling in dusty nappies, toddling in hand-me-down rags, at last walking on worn sandals, haunting the edges of human life loo

Extortionist

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They leaned against the hood of his pickup, which sat heavy on its wheels, the back of it filled with the things that he’d held out of the yard sale three days earlier. “When’re you leaving?” she asked. “Early. Get on down the road. Shut ’er down ea

GRANDMA FLYNN

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She shoved a small bottle under her aprons and came towards me, darkening the passageway from “Ancestor” by Thomas Kinsella The night I heard the Banshee she passed away. In my screaming fear dada and mama woke. …

Dangling About

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Looking at his pale and pimpled flesh, he was repulsed by his flaccid and lifeless member. The accompanying bits, dangled about far from his frame as the summer heat drew them away from his sweaty and unwashed body.

The Martians Are Coming

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"I read a cute animal story yesterday," I tell them. "And I was filled with rage. I can't live like this. There must be no more bears, or hamster-bears, or manatees, being hopeless and depressed. There must be no more cute animal stories—ever."