Most read stories

Ghost Returns Home

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"Do you know how long they've waited for you?" Elle asked. "At first, it was every day after school, waiting at the windows. They wouldn't go play with friends because they wanted to be here, in case you returned. Then, they used to believe you would come

The Vote

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God had decided to resign. Not even two weeks notice. He just resigned. Point blank.

The Dock

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Row, Caps of white, A salted escape beneath reflected light. Brother, remember those old lies? I’m off to sea to make those things right, now.

The Widow Teasdale and the Ineffable Warmth of Personal Services

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Her cash. It smelled like seven-dollar-a-quart gardenia perfume and cave aged cheese—like hope overgrown with mildew.

In Your Dreams

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What did it mean? What would a psychologist say? Oh, who cares. In my opinion, we ask why, what, when, where, and how too often.

The Rest of the Story of Mom

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Easing her hand with her other hand.

maybe just a little too sensitive

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"do you know what your problem is when it comes to girls?" she must mean other than the fact that they're all completely insane. or at least all the ones i've dated.

One old and one new

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served as it is/ among these friends. The frayed filaments/ tickle my chin and irritate my nostrils,

Five Breaths Or Less

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She flew through the air, linen skirt billowing around her. Below, her buckled bicycle was taking a different route. Less aerodynamic than she, its trajectory was brief, crashing into the ditch. Elspeth kept on flying. Time slowed, and expanded

Sand Dollars

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“Life is on life’s terms,” she told me once. Her arm, wrapped in clear cellophane, was freshly adorned with a green-pigmented sand-dollar: a living shell.

On Global Warming

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You think I don't know, that's your whole stupid problem. You don't believe in anyone. You must enjoy living in a dark lonely universe. I don't know if you know or not about the lights that live in your own head, but I believe …

The Face in the Oatmeal

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It was uncomfortable to realize people had agendas. That there could be invisible realities.

needs

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addict for validation and cat tongues

Mob

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He is leaning back against a pillar watching the dancing; a spectator to joy – both planned and spontaneous – that’s unfolding in bodies fourteen and fifteen years old in front of him.

ghosts

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conflicts in time

Prophetstown

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The elders of the town will tell you that as soon the prophet mill arrived everything went to Hell. Before the process was streamlined, prophets used to be grown organically in the community. They popped up only where the ground was tilled and a prayer was planted. They…

Far As You Want

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At a rest stop in Montpelier, they stopped to buy Cokes and gum from the vending machines. He was showing off, trying to jimmy one of the locks with a safety pin but it stayed locked and she laughed at him and he said goddamn, look at all a them Milkyways

Snowed-in March Against the Beautiful Pain Memory of Love, A Ghazal

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Infinite patience, tempered glass hearts—is this what it takes? / Shatterproof backtrack, slow march through reversals—too, what it takes.

Road to Nowhere

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I could smell a bold combination of cheap perfume, stale smoke, and sex excreting from her weathered pores. The bus engine hummed as we climbed a winding road. She scratched her neck and tried to finger comb through her knotted hair. I caught a glimpse of

Lovely

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I would open an eye, waiting for it to absorb the scant light in the room, and I would see her on the far edge of the bed, the topography of her hips now a battlement to keep me at bay.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 43

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Ben was in no mood for games. His ribs hurt and his eye was painful. He would have to tell this girl, who had flicked her tongue in his ear and who did not sound like Sophie, to get lost

Axes

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You think about the first time you saw an axe

left handed

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under your skin the moon is alive

Bestiary

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A woman posted a story on Fictionaut about discovering that her husband was a werewolf.

It Isn’t Personal. It’s Business

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because you pay/ for it to matter to me.

Sounds like leaving

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chains across all the old doors

The Show Must Go On

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I had the idea for a pageant for my obedience school at spring graduation

War Then

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They were just boys, the Nazis I mean, young in their twenties, not much older than my brother Cyril.

How dare you?

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She took a deep breath. Last night, she said, Who was the woman?

Tick

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Palms planted firmly against his temples, Travis paced the room like a caged animal. Giant black bats screeched in his brain, their pointy wings scraping at the edges of his cranium.