1719 15 11
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171900
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After seventeen years of struggling to wake up early in the morning, I had managed to wake up on my own. Actually, I think it was because I was unable to sleep that I was up so early. I had laid on the bed all night, staring at the dark ceiling, taking in every…
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171998
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It is true that the college dogs spread vermin, reeked and shat on the soccer field...
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171922
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“What the hell, bitch?”
The words rolled out of my aching jaw. I twisted my legs around, kicking Lila out of the bed. She screamed, crashing to the floor. All I heard was barking. I threw a pillow at her.
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171911
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My sister, Bonnie, is busy with the dishes as I enter the kitchen; I toss the mail I was sorting through onto the table and look around for Sophie, my four-year-old daughter. "Bonnie, isn't she ready…
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171931
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"On the podium at Pride, he owned that he'd loved taking his children to playgroup as he got to ogle all the breast-feeding mothers. "
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171922
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There was a man dressed in stately attire. His name was Abacus, which maybe you find strange, but then keep this in mind: it is, after all, just a name.
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171953
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Maybe you, citizen, should be a jerk. Jerks get where they are going. You, citizen, what about you? Handy, dandy, where’s the jerk? Conformists. Sheep. All of you, all of us, boiling out our radiators. Spending our day, our days, our lives in coope
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171800
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“Imagine a Shakespearean scholar coming upon an undiscovered work by the Bard. That’s how thrilling this is."
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1718116
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Even in the fading light, it looked big enough to disembowel a man.
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171810
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While the tea was steeping, Ms. Darcy unwrapped the package. The book was lovely. It had nice heavy paper and the print was a good size for reading. The cover was glossy and not too showy, and Ms. Darcy thought it would look just right on her shelf.
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171831
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It was cloudy, the way he liked it -- no baking in the sun. People passed occasionally. He sniffed at the joggers, “Health Nuts,” he dubbed them. He hadn’t exercised since his last high school gym class.
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171811
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171892
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Public Wi-Fi ”hotspots” allow men and women to ogle each other discreetly while pretending to write the Great American Novel.
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1718156
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Call it a spell or a prayer or a ritual; it worked.
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1718106
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The trees would answer with a creak and a crackle.
Fall was near, a rotten apple.
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17181711
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Pholcidae...Daddy Long-Legs
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171755
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You will never know how much it hurts
When someone else touches your face.
But I also know how much you count on others
To pull the slivers out of your heart.
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171763
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There’s an unending parade of drifters, outlaws and crazies and I always have to watch my back, but, then again, that’s nothing new.
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171700
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Scott was sure his father was reassured by the sticky stains in his Penthouse; Dad found them when Scott was thirteen. Dad had just one issue of that venerable porno, which Scott defiled with his joy. It was not the Penthouse models…
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171765
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The boy heard loud barks and squeals, climbed on a chair, and looked out the window at the barnyard and the faded blood red barn.
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171762
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Two women sat at a small round table near the sidewalk waiting for the same man.
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171700
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Under the darkness of their new city. The heave and moan of structures as they breathed and pulsed. Under the darkness of this city, under the hum of their florescent bulbs and the tumbling rattle of motorcars, the wheeze of their machines and the clank o
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171745
|
. . . it's all we ever want -- the holding.
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171778
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“You should've let him drown,” she once told me. Doesn't she see that I did? I'll let her drown, too.
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171764
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Here are some ideas for stories I have had. 1. A captain of a whaling ship loses his leg to a whale, and makes it is life's mission to find this beast and kill it, and make a pair of boots, belt, and wallet out of its skin. 2. Ten people are invited to stay the weekend at a…
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171700
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Ahead, she heard voices. She approached very slowly, as quiet as possible. She knelt behind a pair of shrubs and peeked through a small opening.
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171745
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. . . a visitor from the preceding century would have been aghast to the point of vomiting to behold the regard with which pandas were now held almost universally.
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171765
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When I got to Pete's house he was sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette, bruised and dirty, with a smoking pile of rubble behind him where his house used to be. I hadn't heard yet, but his ol' girl left him and blew up the house when she left.
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171787
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I was at Mike's place when the call came. My brother sounded so accusing that I wanted to punch him in the face. But he was way upstate. "Dad died today," he said, as if I could have somehow known or prevented it. It was sudden. A heart attack. He was…
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