Most read stories

Read Chinese (from The New Yorker)

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Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison—right now that’s all I can say.

ANYONE but Shakespeare

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

Night at the Reservoir on Airline Drive

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

Fictionaut Is Audited

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

postcards from penelope

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fun fact: a doll's legs will twitch while being scalped but only for just a little bit

The Prince of Arthur Avenue

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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.

Love?

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There's a mutual recognition...

Plastic Jesus

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Plastic Jesus wears a crown of thorns. I gesture and say: Does that hurt? He says: What do you mean? so I point at his forehead and his hand goes to it and he says O that

Yeah Yeah I Will I Promise

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After we have sex I slip cash into your purse, just a few bucks, without you knowing. You're not a whore, but I'd like to buy you lunch sometime without having to be there.

Advice to Horror Girl Victims

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leave a trail of potential weapons dropped from your shaking hands. you must always make it easy for him to follow.

The Messenger, Chapter 1

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It's hard to say who was the first to point a finger towards the sky. Maybe it was the cherubic overall-clad toddler perched on the shoulders of his father's worn brown leather jacket. Maybe it was one of the teenaged girls, their long straight hair whipp

Things You Probably Didn't Know About Michigan

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I love Michigan. Michigan is my home. I love living in Michigan. There are so many things about Michigan that people don't know. People of the world don't know anything about Michigan. Our haiku festivals, quality cheeses, our love of skinny neckties and

The Wind Chill Factor Kicked In

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People disappeared in the 70's—young girls, teenagers, they always said they ran away. Nobody really believed that the next-door neighbor was capable of that kind of horror. These two girls disappeared and the police had been digging up the farm of t

While We Fuck

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When you push my bra down, so it rests uncomfortably beneath my breasts—your teeth dragging pink trails across my throat and shoulders, pushing your thumb and forefinger into my panties—you don't say that you love me. You say, “Jesus shit. Relax, baby,…

Too Quiet on the Carpet

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I've seen the pinch marks. It can't be worth it.

The Grief Benches

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I pass the Grief Benches on my way to work. No one is on them today. Last night I saw a couple there, him wet eyed and her with her head down. She scrunched her eyes tight as I passed and I remember thinking she was a fraud. It's alright if you don't want

D Evil in the D

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when the devil dies he divides enough evil for everybody

Arcana Magi - c.17: Separation

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The Sentinels held up their weapons at the main door, preparing for a fight. Lori saw the look on the girl’s eyes, something she felt she should not see in them.

Would You F*ck Rebecca?

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Sergio is Brazilian and his English has zero inflection, so I don't know how to take this question. The possible meanings are innumerable, some of which are very dangerous...

Seventh Floor Ward

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Hers is the kind of crazy that can't be masked. She's worn it on her sleeves since tenth grade.

I Hate Your Favorite Band

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He (after learning of my former occupation as a record store owner): So, what is your favorite band of all time?

The Understanding

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The young boy picks up a coin that has rolled to his feet. It is warm, too warm considering the cold air streaming around him.

Bad Dad

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When they were seven, he’d taken them out to the desert and let them shoot a .38 at rusted cans. The explosions rocked them back on their heels.

The Motel

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She dreamed of a beach.

Featherbedding

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She sets the muffins aside, opens herself, nymph-like, mouth spread and gritty. She pulls the dirty edge of his gray t-shirt up so to show herself to him, spreads herself across the mattress like thin flesh oil over too much canvas....

That Particular Diamond

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looking space packed right in up therelike a sun bleached kite stuck in between the several bluish colorsof the sky today has its ownamazing heartbeat. I can seeit clearly from here. Oh I can feel it reverberating for miles andmiles. If I look away it…

Séjours linguistiques

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I linger and pretend that I’m not there, you find me in the end but I’ll not dare to speak the words I only know to write.

4 o' clock

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I still walk into galleries. A shadow of my old self still walks into galleries. That old self was hungry to be wounded by the juxtaposition of color and form and texture and line and darkness and light. But I can no longer see art. I can…

Pieta

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Come home, my love, and live.

The Black Hole

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Matilda went wild at sixty-five. Legs left unshaven for the first time in fifty years, hair still and proud, knotted with forgetting. She’d roam the streets at night, a traveler without design. Matilda was a gardener of sorts, digging up all previous assu