Most read stories

Disorienteering

21032103 views00 comments00 favs

At night, on these New England roads, there is no light, no pink sodium-vapor glow, no guideposts.

Mona

21032103 views66 comments33 favs

Doc and I talked for several hours. When I told him Mona was pregnant, he turned his head and looked at me. “Who's the father?” he asked. Don't know, I said. Mona didn't know, either.

Common Sense

21032103 views33 comments22 favs

'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'

Twedes

21032103 views2121 comments1515 favs

“Last night the Scots invaded Sweden,” I wrote, “to retrieve the silver filched from the Irish the Norwegians had in their coffers when Sweden conquered. The Swedes offered the Nobel to a Scots writer to keep ... the peace."

I Am Wearing Stolen Socks

21032103 views11 comment00 favs

I am wearing stolen socks. Not because I haven't any of my own, and not because they are an exact fit. Only because they soothe my emptiness inside.

An Object for the Sun God

21022102 views55 comments22 favs

this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh

People Called Our Windows Art

21022102 views55 comments88 favs

Mama hung them everywhere. It started with just a few, in our apartment and outside on the brick. She made walls into windows.

Tomorrows Never Written and Subsequent Unrehearsed Memory

21022102 views66 comments33 favs

For some, a vertical pattern will evoke prison bars, for others, product bar codes.

World Trade Center

21022102 views66 comments11 fav

I can feel the souls of those who perished here They’re still here like old kites hanging in the sky tattered, but they won’t come down or can’t come down just yet because they haven’t fulfilled their unborn promises t

Arcana Magi - c.14: Arrivals

21022102 views11 comment00 favs

Danica saw her hand with the ring lifted up by Oryn. Both of their eyes locked onto the red gem and Danica understood what Oryn offered.

Admiral Cheng Ho's Lost Compass

21012101 views22 comments11 fav

“Cheng Ho didn’t go just Cape Horn; treasure ships visit Australia and America. His very advanced compass. Not just point north-south. Show east-west too.”

Becoming an Author

21012101 views1010 comments88 favs

"good luck, and be assured acceptance for representation or publication is based on different criteria at different agencies and we are sure you will yet find someone mentally deficient enough to give your book a shot."

The Nielsens (part two)

21012101 views00 comments00 favs

[continued from part one...]After sweeps, my schoolwork started to slip. I had trouble paying attention in class, and my workbooks and tests came back from the teacher marked in ketchup red ink. I had always been a good student, and this academic…

Color Wheel

21002100 views1919 comments99 favs

I remember the tan guinea pig, dead of dehydration. Through the wire bars of her cage I viewed her body. She lay stiff on her side, stretched out, as if in her guinea-pig dream she had been running through grassland, open and close to the sky.

In the Woods

20992099 views1212 comments22 favs

...a blunt thrust of a face, uncongenial in profile, and the ubiquitous green cap that says John Deere, with the yellow ideogram of a deer for graduates of our local schools.

Alluvion

20992099 views77 comments44 favs

.

The Words Fall Into Ash

20992099 views1313 comments33 favs

The two were huddled in a corner of an alley, joined by some others that I’m sure wandered into the darkness when they realized they were far from alone. That alley was the one off Market Street. I used to steal candy from the corner shop when I was nin

The Spaceman and the Venusian Vampire Vixens

20982098 views22 comments11 fav

It’s late July, and I’ve just been given the assignment to cover Paganfoil’s ‘Warbird’ tour. To tell you the truth, I really loathe this assignment. I never, ever, EVER cared for hard rock or heavy metal or whatever they’re calling it this dec

Double Entry [WORK-IN-PROGRESS]

20982098 views11 comment11 fav

"Geez," I thought, "not only is this daredevil felon fellow my EXACT height and build — his co-conspiring gal-pal must be, too!" I exhaled what felt like a gallon’s worth of air though my nose. "This is just getting too fucking weird ..."

Tornado Diary

20982098 views55 comments22 favs

The storm grew in might until it spawned the worst kind of tornado, an F-5 or Finger of God.

Epithelial Sample

20982098 views99 comments55 favs

I found my black dot nucleus. School got me in the 10th year with the numbers spilling outta my head, but now I got the cell on my mind. Everybody's floating around this joint all pink and green college clean, yellow face Japanese, or the jet-headed Greeks with their…

Soon to Be a Minor Motion Picture (excerpt)

20982098 views55 comments22 favs

Man, you never ceased to crack me up! If you thought you'd just been called a homo, you probably wouldn't want to try to disprove it by grabbing hold of a naked guy and wrestling him to the floor of a shower room.

PLAYGROUND

20982098 views33 comments33 favs

Marie shrugs. “Maybe she’s just late. Come on, let's wait by the jungle gym.” She runs over and starts climbing. The jungle gym is closest to the path that goes into the woods and down into the canyon. She has to get him into the woods somehow.

Fuck Men!

20982098 views1313 comments1010 favs

I talk wands and magic and how women aren't supposed to care, but I do, and she talks length and girth. Her fiancé has neither, she makes an illustration with her pinky and says that if they don't marry within the year, she's dumping his ass and we

Estranged

20982098 views1010 comments66 favs

He kind of enjoyed living by himself. It was nice and peaceful.

The Sum Above

20982098 views1515 comments1414 favs

The mandatory is not / your friend

The MacGowans Flee West

20982098 views1212 comments1010 favs

Some believe the Scots were encouraged to emigrate, hired guns as it were, to Ireland to civilize that population. If that's the case, we would see it as another evil English trick. In any case, we MacGowans are Scots Irish and Protestant.

Smashed Idol

20982098 views99 comments66 favs

He was the kind of man that I would rather have declawed than date, and then leave him on a gurney, helpless and anaesthetized. Cliff Eames had made me feel that way since we were teenagers. He would never be helpless. …

Swimming Lessons

20972097 views88 comments00 favs

The trainers looked at her and smiled and they were still one creature with four legs and two heads. The old man’s left eye moved in sync with the younger one’s right eye.

Lens

20972097 views2929 comments1212 favs

Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.