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gravelortian part 23

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Can't believe I was able to drive this far

Off Day

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The world is having an off day. The sun is now lavender in color, soft on the eyes, and we stare at the new sun all day without ill effect.

Death

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fate is an illusion we use to ease the terror of our mortality

Substitute

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He wiped it with a damp cloth. He set it in a glazed clay pot next to the sofa and admired its scrawny handsomeness.

Crescent City, Spring '97

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It takes almost an hour before I drift to sleep on the bus. When I wake up in Crescent City, I’m surprised. Maybe I was going somewhere else in my sleep. Walking out of the station, it feels like a strange place. Somewhere I’ve never been before. The

Devoured Worship

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This wasn't going to be about her anymore.She tied her strong purple balloon to the neck of the wounded horse. Her skirt and her top felt like armor's breath. The tingle across her scalp felt warm. Small rug scrapes that made her think of her last dog, before she died.This…

Ghosts

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...ghosts still resentful, ghosts far from home...

The Grave of Rimbaud

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I visited the grave of Rimbaud. / It was pale blue

The Preservation of Innocence (through Times of Hunger and Doubt)

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Alicia got to third block early and scribbled down some of the derivatives homework. Others trickled in intermittently, drifting to their seats like impurities getting caught in a filter.

Crooning

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It was a lover’s dark. They had been talking for hours when daylight lost interest and had gone elsewhere for sport.

Micro Trilogy

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I start with a morsel of truth, then hide it with lies...

Leaky Pipes

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I was thinking everything was OK, until one day I woke up and realized that I was living on an entirely different planet, and you seemed like a complete stranger to me. I was feeling so ashamed of these feelings, that I couldn't even tell you about them. I couldn't…

Commitment

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I have committed to nothing. Therefore I have committed to something. The first sentence is now moot, and this story will eat itself.

Little Women

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The place is buzzing with little women, all clad in black smocks.

Wattle and Daub

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~ ! ~

Don't Mangle the Mongol

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Back in the Dark Ages, the Mongols invented the first hamburger pattie. They put slabs of beef under their horses' saddles and after a few miles of rough riding -- voila! a flattened piece of cow meat. They then proceeded t

The Edge of the World

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I am far from home, wherever that is.

Mobile

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They stand together in the doorway looking at the crib.

Life on TV

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The television volume softens in the shadows.

Escape

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Can’t you do anything right?

Ten Dreams That Raised Some Of the Dead

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Dreams will show you a life that might or might not be yours, but you better believe that they've got to serve when you're asked to come up with a story."--Frank Baron, the night he made bail and left town1. First Blood in Dreams Long Ago The…

Gogol vs. Quixote

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“We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'," said Dostoevsky. Well, sometimes, I think otherwise.

Zeus Takes a Day Job

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That's demeaning enough, but not as hard to take as the customers. They're all jaded hipsters, thumb diddling smartphone freaks, pretending their online interactions actually count as relationships and that “tweets” are real conversations. It's sad, reall

Undercover With the Weird Religious Divorce Rules Unit

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An undercover agent posed as an Orthodox Jewish woman in a sting operation that led to the arrest of two rabbis for kidnapping men who refused to grant divorces to their wives.

Protection

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You're a good dog, she whispered to him, a good brave dog. Her face was tight with soap.

Norm Never Says

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He was supposed to be a garden gnome. Give pause to the squirrels, keep an eye on the impatiums. We found him at Wegman’s. He looked hopeful and observant.

How To Build A Drunken Sandwich

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Kick your employer in the ass. Emotions are strange experiments in honesty.

Out the Window

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she lifted and threw her legs out the open side front window of the speeding auto

Flood

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My mother's afraid the dog will drown. It's raining and our street is flooding and the dog is standing on top of his doghouse. My mother is pregnant. I can stand beneath her stomach and not even see her face. I watch her from the kitchen window. She's shoeless. She holds…

To Build a Fire

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One frozen hand protruded from the snow.