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Flash Before Your Eyes

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It was the dead of winter. I took my father's shotgun from his closet. He kept it wrapped up in one of those khaki-colored gun tote bags that had a zipper running the whole length of the gun. It was a 16-gauge, single action shotgun. Anyone could tell wha

13 imaginary friends

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1. He had thirteen imaginary friends. They knew him better than his mother did.2. His imaginary friends were all born of a cat on the night of a blood moon.3. His imaginary friends had grey skin and red eyes, giving them the appearance of dead people. Their cheeks flushed…

The Industrious Mice

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I am not responsible for any nightmares this piece may cause for all you mice lovers!

Poem in A Dead Language Only I Understand, Translated for You

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I used to be a poet, you know. / Better, in many respects, than you.

Teeth - Yet Another Obsession

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The teeth I want must hold significance. Like the quote, “it’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey,” for me, it’s the connection that I’ve had with someone and the story behind the lost tooth that interests me.

Strange Humidity

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The kitchen is full of old girlfriends. I avoid them. They are munching on cheddar and sharing stories I'm sure I don't want to hear.

Scene at the Courthouse

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Realization of one's ongoing decline. Not a bad thing.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 9

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Michiko stood in front of Steinway Hall on West 57th Street.

Another Supper

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The man was older and had never found a wife. Years of accumulated pain had short-circuited his instincts so that the first time he met the woman, he doubted her. Each time he spoke to her, he felt himself responding, but he wouldn't allow himself to plea

The Suicider (draft)

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He woke up four hours later in his car in his garage with the worst headache of his life. He lurched out of the car and kicked over a basket of basil as he toddled towards the door to the house. He stopped and scooped the spilled basil back into the baske

As the Wine Keeps Flowing

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My blood has turned to flour I've been in Babylon too long My heart was singed by fire But it's drowning in my song We raised a prayer to Mary We had to take our share We took our places in the ferry But we didn't pay the fare And we don't know…

Not So Thoughtful After All

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She put the Necco wafer on Sally's tongue."You can't be the priest, Emma" Sally said nearly choking on the hard, chalky disk."Then why you on yaw knees stupid?""You said to be prayin' and like in church, but you can't be doin' priest stuff. That's for…

conversations with the psychic

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She told me in all my past lives I’ve always been a woman, and I was stuck in this relationship and you weren’t coming back, so I should just move on and get over it. I was a little sad, but yeah, I knew I was going to go back to her one more time, just

Oyster

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"Maybe…" he began searching for some comforting wisdom. "Maybe it's like this. Husbands live for their wives. Mothers live for their children. And children...well...until they're husbands or wives, they live for themselves."

you weren't this way

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i was in the fields, i was moss, was sticking my head in the columbine

Bearded Lady

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Nights this husband returned home still hungry sometimes, even for her forearms against his own

Riverside

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Talking to Shakespeare by the riverside, I am saddened by my lust for women, how my eyes fixate on the spit that passes from top to bottom lip as they talk to me.

Betrayal

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My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the

BUNGEE

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The drop is like a hangman's drop, an executioner's, but farther and longer, perhaps three or four seconds.

Shakespeare's Dark Lady -- John Hudson (review disguised as fiction)

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William Shakespeare (a surname that meant "wanker" back in the day, by the way)

Looking Back On the Night That the Easy Went Under

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Where were you the night Katrina destroyed New Orleans? Oh, what a night... A week later, most of the city was still underwater, with hundreds or thousands of folks presumed dead, and tens of thousands…

Deer Doctors Black Earth

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The doctor bargained with us enough but I kept saying “give it a thousand years and we'll think about it.” He seemed to mean well and be smart enough to not be feeding us snakes, but he wasn't a praying man and I couldn't see past that look he used to give my…

Requiem for a Bodyguard

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People in bad health who want to kill themselves are no different than ancient Romans who ran on their swords. They only want to save themselves a bit of embarrassment.

The Opposite of Fear

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The rocks were pillows around her shorn head, the crimson stream running from her ears the only sign she had not chosen to lay down on them. Behind us, the rockface stood stoic; below us, the water lapped our feet.She held my hand in hers, giving me succor as I…

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 16

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Depression had Frank in its craw.

But Wait, There's More

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A rock group named Stuck Gas Pedal. Another named Tweezer. A group of young punk-rockers wearing neckerchiefs named Mein Kampfire. But wait, there’s more. A song called “We Were Being Facetious,” co-written by them all. Lost Flyswatter. That

Ul Fas Spe Rea Course

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Edmund read ultra-fast: “.Ass - ;fuc gav fas no I will fu fuc fu her he wen fa, ha! Ha!

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.6 - c.4

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A large shadow cast overhead as the sound of sirens blared in the distance. People looked up at the white clouds consumed by the pitch black cloud.

Selling A Wedding Ring

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I somehow ended up with my father's second wife's wedding ring. Although it could actually be his third wife's wedding ring.

The Sky Just Now

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has somehow gotten off its swaddled behind and put on its next new face, your own dipped in glass, of many green eyes for simple fair measure , lifting up my own morning lids with softly pulsating …