1498 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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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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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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149722
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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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1497109
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Only last Friday, he was introduced/
around, smiling, healthy,/
a fine young man.
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149763
|
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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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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14971210
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"S- E- X -- ever heard of it?"
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149710
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Read signs sometimes and you just might get where you're trying to go. When Eddie suggested they stop for a Whopper, Dennis said no. "Fuck Burger King, man. Let's get that Wendy's up there." They got…
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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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149712
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May 1890 Rifle, COLORADO Only pressure can change one thing into another. In terms of time, the…
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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
|
... his skin glistened
like a sharp blade
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149721
|
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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149763
|
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
|
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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1497127
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149633
|
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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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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1496119
|
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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149664
|
. . . 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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149655
|
It is hunting season
in Jersey today.
They say
“There are too many deer
in Jersey today.”
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149631
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Today is my birthday. Well, my assembly date, anyway.
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149696
|
New waitress/bartender
draws my attention to
bare ankles and red hair
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149622
|
Sitting on the couch when we got cable television, on that first day. Pressing buttons that sounded like the slap that your attention span would take as you made your way through the twenty, thirty, forty channels. As you grew older, the amount of channel
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