Most read stories

Red Sky at Night

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Floating in liquor only to drown the next morning.

Bad Ideas I've Had

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Not all ideas are bad, just mine.

The Amber Sea

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There is no life here, only a bleak slab of frozen desert and a sorrowful wind that calls for me to venture out.

Saved

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I woke up pissed off—like that feeling you get when you take a long nap in the afternoon. Except instead of being on a couch or a bed, I was trapped in a mashed-up Honda on I-75.

Rock, Roll, et al.

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She looks for the obit, can't find. Over and over, looks. Nothing. Nothing except something touching her shoulder. Follow me. Corridors, doors, along and along, no time to notice that this last is the stage door — she was so suddenly there in the blare and…

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 4

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He arrived at Bellevue hospital in a straight jacket bound to a gurney.

Christmas Email from an Aging Wicked Stepmother

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Your stepsisters send their love. All three are still on the wagon.

I'm Dreaming of a Nihilistic Christmas

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The mind sparkles with Shakespeare. It's like hearing the rain fall. The world becomes silent and dark and the rain becomes snow and falls like snow and rests on the ground like snow and informs the mind with the values of heaven. A distant oboe pins its sympathies…

In Due Time

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Almost every weekend I'd ask Henry to go out with me and Marge, telling him we could double and, hey, maybe he could bring Ellen, who he dated a while back, who still asked about him. I'd suggest such things as going to a movie or out for a few drinks to reminisce about our…

The Secret of Healers and Monsters

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If there was a single constant in the boy’s life, it was that he had always thrown knives. In his youth he had thrown them only in his mind . . .

The Weather in Paradise

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I immediately felt anxious guilt, being the one responsible for opening the way for infection.

Airman

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Tent City has gone quiet. There is a deadline. I heard it on the news. I’ve never thought about the word before. How in this place it means what it means.

MUSE

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The bar was dark and a little dirty, and that suited Splinker's mood just fine.

What 68 Years on Planet Earth Have Taught Me

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Life is not always quixotic.

A Skeptic’s Faith

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Sunrise steals

Christmas

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First of all, there was no snow. I seem to remember that. And there was no Christmas tree in the house.

Ghosts

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"Yes. It was moving, and not along the ground, either. We were. . . looking toward the cemetery, and the ghost or whatever was clearly visible. . ."

Broken Vase

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Once was when we were in Vegas on layover from L.A., I told her I thought we should go to the Elvis Chapel and get remarried.

The French Horn Behind Me

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And right there beside me That single wobbling Snail-like trail of my heavy French Horn case

Vitamin D

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I caught her a-feasting with her eyes and smilin' at that Jesus- haired Waffle House cook, Dennis Roy, again and I said, “Merlene, my tiny kitty-kat, they's no reason to carry no torch for him ‘cause he may not be with us very long ‘cause, if you notice, they's no…

Beer, for my Gravediggers

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It's cheap beer, but cold you welcome that rushing hiss and the following long drink of chilly wetness washing away the parched, dust dry, cotton mouth of grave-digging in the desert sun

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 52

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In his dreamlike state the pianist turned into a preying mantis.

Beauty

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Now, this boy removed his socks in front of me, on the chair beside my desk where I read my books, and said: “My toenails aren’t shaped properly.”

About Face

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I'll strip off the skin down to the begin again.

Arcana Magi Zero + Pure - c.3

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They followed the crow up a hill, where lights were at its brightest below. The teens stood frozen in time.

Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys #1

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A young girl wavering between celibacy and punk mother-lust despair came to visit us each night

masters of their trade

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vampires seem not to be victims of drought . . .

Love Stories

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I've got an appointment to see my shrink next Wednesday. She's pretty sharp. Not bad looking, either.

She Rose From the Weeds

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you drove by the woman standing on the verge the woman with the shoulders of a long distance swimmer and you told yourself her story: she'd slept in the wiregrass she carries…

Uniquely Portland

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He saw his mother standing over him, and he called out to her for help, but she only laughed and faded into the paper towel dispenser.