Most read stories

Hometown News: Newsprint Jesus (part 2)

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If Don’s story was one of faith carrying someone through his trials, the story of Randy Slafter is another. It was faith that brought him and his family to Johnstown 15 years ago. The wings of faith protected him from the dark angels of grief and tragedy

A Bead Was Lost

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The Bachelor's Hymnal

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OhYou like quiet nights in?I do tooBut we might not get alongbecauseOnly part of youwants silence

Messages from Upstate

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My eyes are wide open. I look like a graphic novel. My world is black and white. I’m poorly drawn. All sounds have an exclamation point.

The Meeting

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When he leans back from the telescope through which he had been looking, he sports a derby and a Hercule Poirot moustache.

three gretchens

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The story of a second, a stone, and an android -- all curiously interrelated and all, coincidentally, named Gretchen

The Hunger of the Waxing Moon

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I took advantage of a free period this afternoon to nap. When I awoke, I tasted blood. My tongue was swollen. I checked myself in the mirror and saw twin punctures on my lower lip with pinpricks of blood on each. I winked at my reflection and lifted my li

Cleaverly Done!

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‘what’s the hassle kiddo, chopping meat is fun, come here and listen to the music of the chop, the sound of steel ripping through air, slicing through flesh and hitting wood, poetry I say’.

Aisle Seven

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A young boy, breathing heavily from running, stopped at her feet, barely able to speak,

Queen Jane Redux

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The laptop has ruined the sanctity of the library. And so I get up and go see Queen Jane.

A taste of competition

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We called him Mickey Habanero, because he could fill his mouth with the hottest food imaginable, the kind packed with the sort of heat that would melt the gums from the teeth of a novice, all without taking a drink of milk or anything else that would otherwise soothe the…

Blood Quantum

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I play in the dirt with cattle bones while Mother rattles the sky. She tells me I have my fathers eyes. The words come through bloody fissures in her lips.

A Philadelphia Story

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In the summer of 1963 I went to Philadelphia to study with a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Sayōnara

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He painted a woman on them, identical to the woman that kneeled by his bed.

The Road

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we were traveling on wasn't necessarily going to go careening over any hill as fast as it was smashing into the blunt end of another cloudless hole like a cartoon cat chasing a cartoon mouse. It was huge like a stone wall that had its own…

Decision Mountain

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For decades the land the village sat on had switched its allegiance between two countries.

This Is Why

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Look at this castle: fashioned from the sturdiest sand, pages of my name

Lost Keys

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The most unoriginal, trite and hackneyed story ever written!

Where is Now and When is There?

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The floor dissolves beneath us, pierced by lasered/ glare of countless eye-beams.

Happy Birthday Sian or How to Fall in Love

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I learned how to fall in love, in one hour, watching The Waltons. John Boy fell in love with Jenny. Jenny fell in love with John Boy. It taught me the right way to fall in love. It taught me the right way to let love go. I was 12 years old. It was a lesson I…

Sleepwalker

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I may as well have been sleepwalking. Either way, I had no opportunity to admire the moonlight flooding into the long corridors, illuminating the stag heads and painted cheeks of long-dead ancestors.

What my daughter knows I know or some likely version

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He doesn't call, not even on her birthday. She doesn't mention it or complain. She knows she doesn't have it as bad as some, even in this privileged Triangle of North Carolina. She is white and pretty and belongs to what's left of the middle…

One Kiss

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"It was one kiss. No tongue. What does that even mean?" Lindley tried to see Leah as any other patient, "What do you want it to mean?" "I don't know," Leah whined, tears welling, "something, maybe. You know I hate surprises." Her sister was not another…

Storm Chasers

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“Okay,” I say, “but my point is the only way you’d ever know if someone really loved you is if they put their life on the line when it counts. Otherwise you gotta take their word for it.”

Wonderland

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The bartender kept looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar. “Everyone in Hollywood is an actor,” Doc said.

Barrier Island

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At the beach house

The Ruined Person

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The pit of my stomach was bottoming out, this lurching sort-of feeling one experiences when one has coasted WELL OVER an abyss and has no way of finding one's bearings . . .

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 7

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Frank kept looking over at Michiko’s loft.

The Old Man and the Cigarette

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Flicking the cigarette into the river the man's face becomes soft, as if waving goodbye to the only real attachment that he has felt in decades.

To Whom It May Concern:

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Now, we can argue about how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, but there is no doubt that it takes eight spritzes of Scrubbing Bubbles bathroom cleaner, three spritzes of Lime-Away, and then a 30 second spray of Oust to incapacitat