1499 2 1
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Lucy shrugs into the corner of the train's seat. She envelopes her IPod in both hands as if she's praying or holding a conch shell: safe, secure like when she visited a Morcombe beach in the school holidays. The only giveaway's the white headphone cord.
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149921
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In the graph of life or death, two axes will inevitably meet. Will it be as jarring as two sharp and well-hewn axes colliding?
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149972
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When Mr. Hawk died, he discovered something. Heaven was like being the library forever. Hell was like being in the library forever. Only one of those places had Ava Gardner.
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149994
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William Shakespeare (a surname that meant "wanker" back in the day, by the way)
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149932
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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
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149822
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Her memory was a faded pastiche of the past, and indeed the present sat uneasily in the middle of the dreams that governed her mind; so it was that often she would forget the day, the time, the year.
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1498109
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Only last Friday, he was introduced/
around, smiling, healthy,/
a fine young man.
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149863
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Chant the ice cream mantra.
Prance the do dah day ballet.
Trot the t-bone tango two-step.
Dance the livelong day away.
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149800
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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.
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149810
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Now Ninalee gets up from the table. She starts to put some snacks in a bag for Janny and Benjie, and some storybooks in there too, to read to them in the park: books about trains, mostly, and there’s one with a bus and one with a car...
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149884
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—Well, are you having an affair with Jack Mahler?
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1497108
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In a dream, he’s covered in masticated bits of paint and canvas and metal shavings and it keeps raining down until he’s buried and he wakes up with a yell.
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149733
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And, you peasy-headed shrew, don’t you dare think I didn’t notice that it was you who stuck that fork into my neck in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot late Tuesday night . . .
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149711
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of Jim Beam when I was maybe fifteen. Or anyway old enough to admire the lesson.
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149742
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Stars fat as the stars that Van Gogh painted on his easel in Arles, a ring of candles burning on the brim of his hat. Stars that fill the night with delirium.
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149753
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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.
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149764
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. . . he wants to organize society into its most efficient configuration with everyone thinking alike and willingly cooperating. Only then, he believes, can humanity reach its full potential.
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14971210
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"S- E- X -- ever heard of it?"
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149755
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149732
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The summer I turned fourteen I wanted a job so I could start saving for a car. Actually, I had a job, but it wasn't much. Seventy-five cents…
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149776
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Steven was a hollow tree of a man — outwardly normal for a tired fortysomething, but empty inside. He lived alone in an old farmhouse that reeked of decomposition and Lysol, the previous tenant having left a dozen skinned raccoon carcasses in the attic.
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149720
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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…
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1497117
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... his skin glistened
like a sharp blade
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149711
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This morning, my band mates discussed their relationship deal breakers.
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149763
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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.
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149731
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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.
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149711
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children love to push the gas up and down my limbs
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149632
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—So much for a cocktail at the tender hour of twilight, he told the empty beer bottle.
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149698
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Just beyond the corkscrew slide / the President of Egypt was bleeding to death
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1496119
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In the summer when it's light out later it's my nature to linger a couple of hours in the park after work, just standing around watching the Downtown Divas working the corner, offering themselves to each male driver who stops for the light and I always joke with them about…
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