Most read stories

I Was a Cat Once

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This is a 50-word story.

Freelance Your Way to Poverty

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Buyers of freelance writing have a well-deserved reputation for responding slowly, thereby increasing your pleasure in much the same way that the Pointer Sisters longed for a slow hand.

Spider and Fly Cafe

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I saw it coming from five feet

Should Have Gotten Delivery Instead

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My mind raced at the endless possibilities one could die while driving to get a pizza.

Don't move

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The tech turns off the music. The capsule blares. I am in Jurassic Park with Sam Neill. I am Timmy, descending the electrified fence, almost toast. I am Karen Silkwood, a deer in the headlights, then showering off plutonium. A garbage truck is compacting

Anthrax

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Exhausted, weak from the struggle against the personal gift of terrorism delivered by her ex-boyfriend, she died for a few minutes.

A Skeptic’s Faith in Four Parts

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The universe will fuck you over in the end./ That’s what it does, what it’s good at—

Familiar Things

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After lunch I left my office and trickled along like a slow leak, a notch above meandering; gravity had become a lateral force that pulled me forward.

Hellgate

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Either it was rescue--if the customer was alive to be found--or recovery, the term for bringing out the dead.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 18

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Detective-Sergeant Claude Mulvihill was seasick. He was in a New York City Harbor Police boat in the East River headed towards the George Washington Bridge. There was a good chop in the harbor, which became worse when the Police Boat reached the Battery.

2001, What I Wanted

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feet that would run until their soles were pages of Gideon’s Bibles, worn too thin to touch

The Sound of Human Lives

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The room smelled of an old rank basement. Boys and girls of all ages crowded the stage. The room was dark with only a few lights that hung from above keeping the crowd dark and silhouetting Chris on drums.

Acrobats

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What a beautiful day it was, what a wonderful day to lose one's mind. This is what you think going into it, that it is all a wonderful dream come true, and sure I'll have my hands full, but at the end of the day it will be worth something. If I hang in long enough,…

I May be Dried Up -- But I can Make You Breakfast in the Morning

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Our dinner was over and we regretfully had to leave the restaurant. She leaves with enough shopping money for a few weeks. He, getting the rough end of the deal, has charged more money to his credit card at 19% plus cash withdrawal fees. So I ask myself

Hollywood Stars

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Your Uncle Howard and I listened to Dutch Reagan re broadcast big league baseball on WHO Radio when we were little. He'd call the play action off the wire complete with sound effects. The son of a bitch turned out to be a Republican...

Three Micros

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I asked the hospice nurse about maggots.

Wishing for the Shadow of a Perfect Cube

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Words darken with smut and irony over time.

Remembering Ginsberg

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Remembering Ginsberg who howled through just about everybody's idea of the real weirdo poet

On the Road

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how did they not know

Vain Boasts and Confessions in Descending Mode

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My, but how that girl loved to defenestrate! I shall ever be grateful for my obstinacy with never living more than a single story above ground level.

Arrivals

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The poppers, the Viagra, the chorizo – all had been ordered and all had arrived.

Route 346

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Route 346 is the way Pop drove to Troy long after everybody else took Route 2. Today Charlie and I drive in the opposite direction. Back then, Pop drove us to Troy on Route 346 on Sunday afternoons with the car windows…

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 24

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When Frank entered Michiko’s apartment, Michiko was not there.

Can Bone-Munching Zombie Worms Help Fight Childhood Obesity?

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President Kennedy’s national physical fitness program tried to reverse the incoming tide of obesity, but for many it was too late.

The Way Home

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Her back turned, she wanders off searching for the way home wringing her hands, trying to think, but thoughts evade her.

The Face in the Oatmeal

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

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…

Dog Years

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Already my back aches

fish gut buckets

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The pier stretched out by where sharks came and men waited with beautiful dirty buckets that held strange and dangerous things, buckets with fish guts, buckets with blood, with character, buckets like prophets or a gritty desert walking saviour like Chris

Annulling the Future

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If you can’t consummate tomorrow / you may as well just annul the future