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Turkey Hunt

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While I was still new at Black & Twigg, shortly before Thanksgiving, Percy brought me a handwritten memo to type, the subject “Turkey Hunt,” addressed to all Black & Twigg employees in the San Francisco office from management. It said that the firm…

Whyisthereaheavyweight?

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Why is there a heavy weight and a chain and a padlock in her woodstove? Because, she says to herself, slightly hysterically, because this is yet another thing that you must carry. Why? Because life is full of chains and padlocks and heavy weights. Hea

Two Little Fictions

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His work was done. For sixty years, beginning soon after his seventeenth birthday, he had listened to the gods- good, bad, somewhere in between-

Four Fundamentalist Teenagers In Front Of A Metropolitan Railway Car

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That morning, four children appeared in front of the train, which was ready to depart

Criminals

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What about the goons? Those criminals thwarted and left for dead in every action movie for the past thirty years. I'm sure at least a dozen survived the slaughters. I'm sure at least one or two came out if it reformed. This one who quit working for Columbian drug smugglers…

Desperate For A Good Leg

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Of course the man went tumbling, and though he fell not far, a falling with a body full of meats and sweet breads makes the landing something awful-not so bad that Desperate got it-only so the leg puffed like a blue, rain swollen, earth-bound cloud.

Prime cut

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1I don't like it when they leave the heads on.I mean it's not nice, is it.The idyllic order of the abattoir.Mary is on stunning and bleeding.She prefers evisceration.Still, the work's ok and it's her day off tomorrow.Deft hands perform their daily ballet.Mary had a…

The Perfect Day

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Robbie Lange closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair. Yawning, he looked out the window into the black night. Another evening at the office, he thought. He counted the other lit windows in the skyscrapers around his building. “Goodnight, everyone

North from Laguna Beach

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I was Orson Welles skulking in the shadows and you Alida Valli; our time measured like footsteps advancing on Gethsemane.

Kill it

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my dog had a tumor

Dead Girl Rolling

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They left me on a gurney for hours...

Mania

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To Charles Bukowski "I haven't shat or pissed in seven years," she tells him, negotiating each word around the Marlboro. Because he doesn't know what else to say, Isaiah asks, "Haven't you seen a …

Ojibwe

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"Did I have a choice? Could I just open my eyes, did I have to ‘see’ as he was telling me now I could? I decided to go for it. What did I have to lose? This was all a dream, too much driving to get here, too much reunion, too much food, too much beer. Or

The Aunts

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My father's heart stumbles like a punch drunk fighter. I don't notice until I'm bending over him to help him up. He's lying a little down the hill from his truck, his door open, the motor still running. The…

Cory's Carousel

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There was an ownership about the makeshift carnival. There was a therapy there.

A Sometimes Niggling Notion

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A po'm

After Grief

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Within a day, she had a scummy apartment which belonged to the government. It had cockroaches, which she was not used to. They churned her stomach, repulsive little things. Not even creatures. Two brains, she'd read: one in the head, one in the ass.

Tuscaloosa

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a Ferris wheel gently rocks its last riders then dumps them to the ground.

A Spark and a Flash

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Butchie was the one who heard about the bonfire happening over on Harrison Avenue.

Cradle

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Fingers fan like birds’ wings cradling the volume, head hanging low and lips moving silently...

A Life

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Born, he stood up. He wore nothing as often as possible

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.

Glad the Moon Worked the Night Shift

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When we were seventeen, after her dad, the preacher, finished his Sunday night church services that required our mandatory attendance, we'd walk to my car in the pasture-turned parking lot holding hands and stop at the passenger-side car door to kiss deeply, get…

Probability

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1: The Zero Product Property states that if a multiplied by b equals zero, then zero must equal a or b. Thus, to prove this theory, multiply a and b divided by a. Use the broken chord theorem to crease the zero by disrupting the circular movement of the skewed line. As a…

That Pill

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It’s good to have some, Extra weight - Something they can Grab on to, In the sheets, When it’s late-

Alternate Timelines

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Physicists say that a tremendous amount of energy has to be generated in order to rip through space-time, to jump to another place, and at this time, we're incapable of doing it. I have to disagree. They've never met my brain. I fear it's going to kill me

WHORES

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... if they called her Mother, would she take them home and raise them?

Now and Then

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We wore cowboy hats and jeans in the pictures. They both came off once his camera disappeared.

NAN : A Novel-In-Stories

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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.

How To Break A Toe In One Easy Step

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Life is hard and toes are fragile, which means that by the time you reach middle age, you've probably broken one. Or two. I recently broke a toe when I got out of bed in the middle of the night and tripped over a shoe. When friends and family consoled me with…