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Tea Time

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But I sense a tremor in your soul as well, young friend, a yearning of some sorts.

Orslan

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After going to the garage and moving at least 4000 boxes of junk we found the coat rack. We wrestled it up the stairs to my room. I wasn't much help, but Dad was cool about it. I think he was just happy I liked the suit.

Morning Love Song

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when I said good morning I meant

Wilderness

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We call this game the end of the world...

Micromanaged Truth

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Let your father stay through that dinner when his mistress needed him, while your mother was on the verge.

Don't Forgive Me

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of anything if that's the way you feel your love must go down, off its last nut before the big victimizing crash of the end of days and flowers. But watch out for thosethorn bushes that grow from forgotten holes in the ground.…

leyh (they say)

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and then he began to sing, along with the ghostly villagers

Sarah Nell

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There are two, though, that stayed for more than just a little while: Marvin and Oscar. Marvin was married and that's all I have to say about that. Oscar wasn't and it seemed as though he wasn't planning on getting married either. What a petty man he was.

Disposable Pleasures

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when I take the time/now to remember/ you have become/a thousand page/memory book

To The Guy Who Sat Next To Me On The Flight Home From Amsterdam

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I guess you felt more comfortable holding your Moby Dick

The Grand Inn

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I saw blood. The walls of the bar were completely covered in red shag carpeting. Had I been thrown back in time to the Seventies? It felt as if I had entered Hell itself. No, this was not Hell. This was the Aryan-Brotherhood's version of the movie Shaft. I…

Working at a Truck Stop Outside Charlotte

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My name's Barbara and don't call me Barbie if you want to be my friend.

The Duke of Travel

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...he had that same grin, better than a racy French picture.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 1

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Defenestration - the act of throwing someone out of a window. I went to Prague recently to visit my family’s castle, which is called Krivoklat. I’m not even going to attempt to explain to you how to pronounce that. It’s outside Prague, about an hour t

ROMANCE

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In the neon light and barroom shadows,

Five Million Yen: Chapter 13

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-That’s more like it. He released Ben and holstered his gun under his leather jacket.

the spirit of the dead watching. Gauguin

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Listening too much to the night, with its whistles, bright lights of luminescent bursts like leaves on fire, or the raised ear of a cow in the purple mist, or the curled tail of a pig foraging in the night.

Up Front

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He almost died, but hasn’t been this much alive ever.

The Lonely White Elephant in Rome

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the gambling priest stands in the morning fog/red moon hangs in the sky/the army of seven houses marches over the hill

Five

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"It all began with a painting," I said. "Mostly blue. Acrylic. Naturalistic in a modern sense. She was stylized but recognizable, and her breasts were exposed. Everyone could see her disordered skirt. The painter was a fan of Herrick.

I Wonder

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I wonder what it would be like to dog-paddle in the middle of the ocean. I wonder how Jean Auguste Ingres got the flesh tones for “Odalisque.” I wonder if bees have dreams.

Leaky Guts

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One day, Dasha confessed to Igor that she had an incurable illness: Purple emptiness.

Never Catch Me Alive

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We walk with our heads down, maybe 15 of us, moving under a sun that has grown to encompass everything. Everything is in hues of orange and red like a bloody eyeball on fire.

Finite

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This was not a good sign, comforting gestures from strangers were bad omens.

Love of a Lifetime

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Love is easy when all is going well, but it is one of life’s profound, humbling lessons that few people love you enough to wipe your butt.

More from The Chronicles of His Demise

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Dread and drudgery sour each day

Five Million Yen: Chapter 63

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Gringovitch sat on the big leather chair in Olivia’s suite. Before him on a coffee table were the nude sketches he’d made of her earlier that day.

A Noir Celebration

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A kind of sucking darkness into A kind of noir celebration of despair

Island Numbers

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an island hidden in the sound holds treasure

Five Acts

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The television was playing reruns of Mr. Ed, but it was hard to hear because of the flock of birds in the palm tree. I’d sometimes imagined the birds coming through the window, a swarming of pink cotton mouths, mawing everything in sight.