Most read stories

ANYONE but Shakespeare

25122512 views88 comments66 favs

Shakespeare was Shakespeare, after all, the greatest poet the language has ever boasted: why did Shakespeare’s contemporaries even bother with their paltry efforts?

At the Wedding

25122512 views1414 comments66 favs

I wear a white dress. I vomit on hers.

Bougainvillea

25122512 views1111 comments33 favs

Marcel Proust ran about the grounds chasing an itinerant tennis ball and kissing the guests, his huge testicles sweeping the lawn.

The 24-hour Date

25122512 views77 comments88 favs

We watched kids tweeze snapping turtles out of the park grass. They dropped them into a styrophoam cup and called it the snap turtle home. When they grow up they will bite your arms off, their father said laughing.

Yadda, Yadda, Yaddo

25112511 views33 comments11 fav

I arrived at Yaddo, the prestigious artists’ retreat, in the summer of 1941. With America’s “day that will live in infamy” several months away, my own day of infamy began the second morning of my residency.

The Prince of Arthur Avenue

25112511 views1515 comments44 favs

There’s things you can change in this world and things you can’t. We have to figure out which is which. Though I never was much good at it, I guess.

Mussel Memory

25102510 views1717 comments1717 favs

Andreas Cappelanus taught that the word / “love” comes from the word meaning / “to fish.”

I Cant Do This Anymore

25102510 views1212 comments44 favs

It's a lie, it doesnt mean anything this, only that my lips are ripe and soft.

Over Fifty

25092509 views1515 comments1414 favs

Yet it was another thing to grow to become indispensable to someone without whose infirmities the helper could not exist. People in general had started to call that helpless requiring “codependency,” but to Althea that word did no good,

Dr. Nishad

25092509 views1414 comments66 favs

Sometimes she imagined the piles of Dr. Nishad's medical waste at the end of productive day at the hospital. Stacks and heaps of connective tissue, lung matter, gristle and bone, cancerous clumps of tongue and stomach and ropes of bad muscles like wrung,

Cabana

25082508 views66 comments66 favs

my first racist joke

25072507 views44 comments44 favs

"There's a guy and he's standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon."

At a loss

25072507 views55 comments55 favs

I used to charm you, hold you in my hand.

Arcana Magi - c.15: Chisame Murakami, Sentinel of Genbu

25072507 views00 comments00 favs

The water burst into droplets of rain and fell on top of her. Chisame laughed out loud, a joy that overwhelmed her as she repeated this feat over and over.

Aviary

25072507 views1313 comments33 favs

I am a 33 year old drag queen, and I frequently confuse my dreams with reality. Each morning, I awake to a research project: what has actually occurred, and what was a dream? Today I woke up believing I'd lost a pound, so I weighed myself, and I was right.…

Skyscrapers

25072507 views2020 comments1313 favs

I love to lie when discovered. "I'm your new neighbor." "The landlord sent me." "I'm the ghost of the girl who died on the 11th floor." "I fell from the sky." I wear billowing white dresses and a wide-brimmed straw hat that throws my face into shadow. Peo

Illicit

25062506 views1414 comments99 favs

... a moth, a kiss. A silence.

Fictionaut Is Audited

25052505 views3333 comments2020 favs

Somehow, random phrases and sentences from the stories, comments and profile pages were generated as “replies”.

The Thief

25042504 views5252 comments2424 favs

I said, kiss this.

Rodney & Chelsea

25042504 views3333 comments1818 favs

Chelsea's breasts are more the size of tangerines, but he likes them. He likes that she smells like Fruit Loops and that her front teeth overlap slightly. Her mouth is glossed. He slips his tongue inside.

Surrendering August

25032503 views77 comments77 favs

on the far shore, in the vineyards timed charges explode like the sun catching on fire it scares crows away from the grapes

Night at the Reservoir on Airline Drive

25022502 views4444 comments2626 favs

Del and I watched my brother toe his way to the edge of the cottonwood branch that arched over the reservoir.

a crushed pepsi can floats down

25022502 views2424 comments2121 favs

These days, even God has a day job.

Goddesses

25022502 views55 comments66 favs

The man she loved did not love her. At first she prayed to Athena for strength and steadiness. She began to knock on wood, spit on her…

Swimming

25002500 views44 comments33 favs

I held on to the edge

Ants

25002500 views1717 comments99 favs

I don't know what happened to all the men. Used to wonder if they killed them all.

Why We Came to Target at 9:58 on a Monday Night

25002500 views1818 comments1313 favs

Donnie remembers just in time. So we run practically every stop sign and red light in town, and get there just before they close.

Autobiography

24992499 views2929 comments1818 favs

The story of my life/ would put insomniacs to sleep.

I Am

24992499 views99 comments44 favs

When I was a boy, I always wondered if Dad were black. No one in our small town looked like Dad. He had the thick features of an Arab. If he let his hair grow, it piled up in messy loafs on his head. Of course, I never asked Dad about any of this. I wasn'

The Summer Reading Program -- A Librarian Tells All!

24982498 views55 comments44 favs

It's July, which, if you work in a public library, means that the Summer Reading Club is in full swing. The SRC used to be just for kids, to motivate them to read when school wasn't in session. But in recent years many libraries have expanded the program to include…