Most read stories

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.

Cleaning Man

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The Zone is a garden of skyscrapers. Every building is a model.

You Don't Listen

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What time is it? 3:47. Adam says before 5 is too early. Maybe he should stay home with our daughters once in a while. Let’s see him make it to 5 o’clock. It is Friday. I’ll mix it with orange juice. He never notices. I better check on Debra.

Malaise

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Endurance wears the soul thin.// The hour to succumb ticks ever closer.

The Naming

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we name invasive species,

Quintet in a Minor Key Near the End of Time

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The one thing I believe in is collapse./ Abandoned buildings collapse. Civilizations// collapse. Financial bubbles collapse./ Stars and galaxies collapse. Falling// is something that comes quite naturally/ to puffed up things.

Xs and Os

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Momma pointed out our paintings on the walls, the signs we had learned, but when Daddy saw our friends, their wheelchairs, braces on their legs, he left...

A Not-For-Kids Dream That All Boys Have

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The room turns red and I start screaming and ejaculating. The whole class is watching as Mr.Smith slams down my copy of the test with his right hand and swiftly tears off my penis with his left.

We Are Waiting For The Wolves

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You say we will go together to the park and dig a shallow grave and atone for everything we ever did by breathing soil deep into our lungs, and the wolves will leave.

Cougar

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What follows is one of those moments, though to some people, it would seem a fantasy, perhaps a "Wizard of Oz" era tale.

The Naming of Girls

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I sneak glances of her unhooking the clasp, taking it off, so that her back is bare, and I can see the muscles, the bones underneath move as she puts the new one on...

Five Million Yen: Chapter 4

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There was no one there, but the smell of cooked bacon permeated the hall, triggering borborygmus in his stomach. He loved that word, but not his empty stomach.

I'll be Home for Christmas

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She hasn't called me in days. Before calling her, I search my memory for something romantic to say. Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 says exactly what I'm thinking. But she doesn't need to hear it. She already knows, as all human efforts come to an end, my core energies are tapering…

Speaking to the Dead

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I didn't hear your last words or see your lasteyes. I didn't reach you in time, so I sat by your corpse,silently saying goodbye. I am in that process,not sour, not sweet, that yoked speaking which can't(because the heart won't let it) utter its whisperedlast word, but…

let’s play hooky

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There is just something about a thin, white cotton v-neck t-shirt, he thought, as he ran his hand over bleary eyes and dehydrated lips. He wanted her, as always. But he needed just a little more rest. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail. It…

After Prometheus

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His method is simple...

Shakedown Street

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The combined smells of ocean breeze, grilled cheese sandwiches, incense and sweat and burning herb that wafted over from Shakedown, along with windblown notes from tinny car speakers all rolled into a potent sensory cocktail he hadn’t tasted in far too l

Dispensation

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My life was growing on me like a soft Scottish moss

Wintering

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Winter makes me reconsider.

Spitwads

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Two types coexist- the sanguine/ and exsanguinated./ My skin is cool/ and pale as moonlight

Bodies Approaching Rest

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He hates this body no less now/ than he did at 14 for its pudginess/ and the hair that can’t conform

Beverly Abbey

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Downton Abbey and The Beverly Hillbillies. They're practically the same show.

The Cake Forest

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They look like amateur beavers, all twenty-seven of them on their knees, gnawing through frosting bark. My wife is taking notes on a huge purple flower, listening to the kids as they shout out what tree corresponds to what flavor.

D.X. (Flag Day Challenge)

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Today is my birthday. Well, my assembly date, anyway.

Patagonia

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When he was certain he was ready, he set out. The journey was arduous for a man of his years. Yet, he seemed to spring to it, like a dog to a bone. Maybe like a lion to it's prey; mostly in the best way possible for a man such as he.

Faceless

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The sting of a slap will be remembered, as will sex, or at least a fragment of it, such as the face of a man in your room who tied your hands with the belt of your plush terry bathrobe.

Happy Birthday Mr. Watterson, Wherever You Are!

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Bill Watterson isn't just the creator of the world's best comic strip. According to the book “Looking for Calvin and Hobbes,” a biography of the elusive and reclusive cartoonist, Watterson is also a world-class introvert. Watterson refuses to make…

Morphine

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Until the ivy hides me in

His Nightmares

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Motionless seconds turned

To Really Hear

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He's driving in the Sierra Nevada with his wife and their small daughters and the girls are fighting and he can't take much more of it.