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The Master of Sleep

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The Master of Sleep had lived alone for many years, so when his daughters first moved into his house he welcomed them, seemingly glad for their company...

The Shreds of Flame

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For years I watched behind the glass While merry parties purpled past But now the world’s a Solemn Mass And I can only think.

Hangover

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“You wouldn't believe it.” Peter leaned in to whisper. “Don’t let the Kodak moment with the wife and kids fool you. That guy is totally gay.”

Divided

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Sasha and I had snorted a table of cocaine and I had her trapped inside my Joy Division bedroom.

Take our marriage and replace it with blue cheese dressing,

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the brand we like best and buy whether it's on sale or not. Surely there is another blue cheese dressing that is sold, possibly in San Francisco and made in a Berkeley basement by hippies who scrape together all of their change twice a year and buy cheese from an ancient…

How to travel with your Demons (4)

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I also understand if you don't think that's fair. But consider this: If she doesn't operate according to those rules, then where are we? Isn't that anarchy?

Trader Joe's, on a Sunday

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When you think I'm not looking, I always am. You say it's like nicotine, your best analogy as a non-smoker. The kind of hit that is hard to live without and isn't it human nature, you ponder.

The Deli Worker

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This is the story of my friend, Gil

Arcana Magi - c.26: Science versus Magic

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Brie stood before the dwarf that activated the de-paralyzer. She noticed her blueprints spread across the table beside the computer the dwarf stood in front of it.

Saw Her

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Just like that. He heard her words clearly from the top floor of the five story apartment building. The unexpected change in weather made it mandatory for him to open his window.

1999, What I Wanted

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Breasts don't make you a woman, but no one told me that.

That One Time We Were on NPR...

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Twelve people in the band, the two women arrive first (arrive on time).

Bad Boys

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You the macho man shuffling one woman out the back entrance to let another one in the front.

Smoke

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On his last day of high school Jackie York woke up to the smell of burning books. He didn't know it was his last day of high school. He did know the smoke coming through his rusty window screen was book smoke.

Three Flash Sonnets

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Poor souls. Likely they'll be poets.

Hemingway for Gloria

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He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.

Safety First

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I am not a gun, but I think I may have pulled a plastic movie trigger in some kind of real world action before, accelerated, pivotal scene, one way or another before, this new frame came into its paranoid view .You see? I am not a plastic water bottle,but I…

Ancestry.comedy

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all paths converge on Africa/ and Eden, and the fall from animal grace

Flirting With Immortality

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That stupid bastard seemed to defy death at every turn in his life. His actions suggested invincibility, but his catch phrase indicated full awareness that he was indeed quite vincible. And how fitting was his name. We didn’t know if it

The Beginning and End of Comedy

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Puberty, for Ellen, was less than an overnight event—yes, she got her period in a more or less timely fashion, but what her doctor referred to coolly as secondary sexual characteristics—namely, boobs—took their damned sweet time in coming.

Shuffling Deck Chairs on the Titanic

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He said he'd searched in vain for his wife, Mary, before abandoning hope and the ship in one of the last row boats. He was allowed in because of his experience fishing.

On Our Way

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  They met on a bus. The bus got lost. He had corn chips. She had a tuna sandwich. They shared. “This is good,” he said. “Did you make this?” …

Auto Imperative

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I drove to you in April / and you loved me all through Illinois

Life as a Porno

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It could as well be late night infomercials/ saturating the screen// with medieval looking exercise machines

Cavity

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his perfect ivory voice telling me i brush too hard. …as if he cared

Blood By Pines

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But all that they found at the top was bloody red spatters on pure white snowflakes. And beyond that footprints that got smaller and smaller until they disappeared completely into the spicy green pines.

A Christmas Surprise

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"John is going to love it when he finds out that it pees," Bobby said. Kelly laughed and dropped a towel on the floor.

(5) Forgiveness

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“Charlie was right about you, Nan,” she said in a voice of pure defeat. “You are a gentle spirit. And probably too good for people like us.”

Siam

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Our city is really two cities, conjoined. One lives during the day, the other at night. Those who live and breathe daytime air call the city by one name, a name which evokes the relative newness of the place, a name with words just barely invented.…

Orange Tears

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Remember me? I am the large, dented acorn you threw at your brother, Ken, during the huge acorn war of 1969. You were thirteen. He was eleven. And the entire neighborhood was in your backyard that day. Steve, Jack, Jerry, Tom, Dan, Jeff, Drew. A bunch of the kids…