Most read stories

Paul Steven Stone Goes Topless

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Breaking News: Noted local writer and very minor celebrity Paul Steven Stone joined a growing list of talentless wannabes to bare skin and a hint of nipple in a shameless attempt to draw attention to his current blog posting. When asked how far he would g

Shenanigans 1 : Lack of observation

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Keep it quick (and they usually did) and it was simple. Quick as the walk between their houses, from number 27 to number 33 (odd numbers only), and simple as the alibi.

children

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Since I have never found any mention of children that you may have had in your writings, I've been a little reluctant to tell you this story. It may be a touchy subject for you...I don't know. It's a lot of conjecture on my part, but there's one indispu

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

Disappear Everywhere

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heroes and monsters

Film Appreciation

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“Shane, will you turn off the lights?” Jean asked. “Film really is much better with the correct lighting.” “I believe you,” Shane said while he switched off the lights, blanketing the room in complete darkness. The large TV on the…

What We Talk About When We Talk About Photosynthesis

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Minimalist/realist short-story writer Raymond Carver was fired from his job as an editor of science textbooks because of his inappropriate writing style.

Our Date Was Better In Reverse

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I felt my words reach out and try to grab him by the heart. They missed.

Mantis

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Sally knows the situation: if your name's on the list you can't come in. If they try to walk past her, swipe their card on the electronic barrier's scanner, instead of a short benevolent bleep and the gate sliding open, it will fail. The hapless individua

Garbage in, garbage out

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Sam tapped the stick against the small mountain of trash bags, a dull thud predictably followed by a dozen rats scurrying out of the mass. He's started to make a personal game of it — seeing how many he can kill with one whack; if he swings hard enough, and in…

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 20

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Elaine Aster paced her office trailing a cloud of smoke of cigarette smoke.

Down South

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We drank beer and played loose pool, attracted two fun girls, one Jamaican, the other dirty blonde, both of whom seemed interested in only one of the four of us.

ALL SMOKE RISES. The story of Lilly and her need for MILK-BLOOD

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Lilly was anything but a white flower. Her skin had been blackened and burnt. Charred legs and arms stuck out like tiny tree limbs, the knuckles on her fingers barely covered by skin. The child’s face is frozen in the beginnings of a scream. She seems anc

The Dance

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Angelo stood to the side and lit a cigarette.

Lilies

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Every spring, outside on the back deck, my mother and I have the same talk about how time flies, and she always waves her hand in the air as if swatting at a fly, but there's never anything there. She thinks the lilies will live all summer spread like a rainbow,…

I Should’ve

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I should've traced my steps. I'm lost in a sea of hyperlinks.

Nearly Whole

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I want that one, unnoticed taste.

What's a Horse without a Loofah?

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A horse is a horse Of course, of course Unless it's a horse Without a Loofah You better look into the mirror Check the picture window too I may not be the only one Who's broken Don't it take a little more When I'm not with you? Don

City Meat

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Of red snappers, flaccid on porcelain slabs...

assemblage x + 1

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so here we all are/ deep in debt

The Fool on the Hill

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It is wonderful to talk to Mick Jagger in his hotel room. He is absolutely charming, and the women filling the room seem as natural as the sound of rain or the play of sunlight.

Souvenir

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Hours later, when I was on the phone trying to explain in broken Greek that I didn't have the money to pay damages, I started to retrace my steps from that souvenir shop I reduced to dust.

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.

March Tenth, Two Thousand And Thirteen

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But the things I do know are the ways we've changed since we'd fallen into each other.

Shouting the Muse Down

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In the tumbled-down now there's too much material, culled from pretty boys that don't notice me and tattooed ones that do, and I'm certain there's at least one dreamer soaking eyes into me who knows all the twisted lyrics invoking pretty little horses.

Joe Wheeler

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Bearded massage parlors of dissonance whittle away hours for a few dollars and cents

War Story : Alternate Duty

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They say that air traffic control is stressful work and I guess it is for some people. It did require a lot of concentration but that never bothered me much. I could keep the position, bearing and altitude of a couple of dozen aircraft in my head without

Waiting for Lunch

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The banality of his own state of boredom, a luxury to be satiated with violence, to hack with an axe the exposed neck of his friend.

The Babies

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We jam into the green tent as it begins to rain. His casket is covered with flowers and there is the picture you took of him, the day you climbed the fire tower from where you could see forever, past his smiling face the bars and a million changing leaves.His pregnant girl…

Flight

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I know what to expect because this has happened before. The darkness, the stench of an unlit match, The leathery sound of old wings flapping and finally that voice made up of feces and dust, ancient and terrible suggesting depravity and painful deaths t