Most read stories

The Words Fall Into Ash

21242124 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

Still Life with a Bottle of Olives

21232123 views88 comments55 favs

On the table the image is by Chardin but the puzzle is by someone else and that is what he has dumped out of the box.

Death At McDonalds, or How I Learned To Love

21232123 views1010 comments44 favs

"I sighed heavily. 'Goddamn it...' I spat under my breath. 'Every motherfucking time..."

PLAYGROUND

21232123 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.

World Trade Center

21232123 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

Wet funeral

21232123 views88 comments88 favs

I know now, how she moves without verbs after you crushed her into the river.

Lens

21222122 views2929 comments1212 favs

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

Tomorrows Never Written and Subsequent Unrehearsed Memory

21222122 views66 comments33 favs

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

Twedes

21222122 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."

Flying Tiger

21222122 views1919 comments99 favs

I screwed my courage to the sticking point and asked him if he had shot down any Japanese airplanes. He grinned at me. “One,” he said.

Smashed Idol

21222122 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. …

How Elm Trees Die

21212121 views3030 comments1313 favs

I had felt suddenly lighter and next thing I knew I was watching Leonard Tucker and Sister William from somewhere near the ceiling. I saw myself, too, at my desk, holding my songbook out in front of me like everyone else.

Epithelial Sample

21212121 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…

Hat Shop Girls

21212121 views77 comments33 favs

My favorite was a red bowler, a man's hat, which I never dared wear outside my tiny bedroom. My three brothers wanted it too much to take that kind of a risk. They'd poke me with various sharp objects: the serrated edge of the bread knife, the rusted TV

Paris

21212121 views1515 comments77 favs

the boredom inherent in living in the suburbs

Cremains

21212121 views1313 comments1010 favs

I need a different storage solution

Welcome to the Occupation

21202120 views88 comments88 favs

You just watch, the schoolteachers’ll be next and then you’ll see shit go down. Imagine what happens when a fifth-grader sees his teacher getting frog-marched through a crowd on YouTube.

(From an Awakened Sleep)

21202120 views1010 comments1313 favs

pluck me from the charred grate

Apollinaire's Trepanned Skull

21202120 views1212 comments77 favs

It was only when blood began to drip onto the page that he realized he'd been hit.

Quiet City

21202120 views66 comments66 favs

I hope you'll have the time to read this before your attention wanders.

Chairs and Mirrors

21202120 views1616 comments1616 favs

There's a mirror in front of me and I thought it was so I could see myself, but I didn't want to see me.

Arcana Magi - c.14: Arrivals

21202120 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.

The bridge

21192119 views1919 comments1515 favs

as long as you have some snacks up there I can be brave

Ingrid Bergman Answers the Call

21192119 views33 comments44 favs

Out the window is an empty birdbath, dry flaky concrete ring, no birds.

Fuck Men!

21192119 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

The MacGowans Flee West

21192119 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.

Years After

21192119 views88 comments66 favs

Years After she can go home.

Optical Delusion

21182118 views2424 comments1616 favs

Veiled by tenuous clouds and dirty air,

Red

21182118 views66 comments22 favs

Erwin came into the kitchen through the back door and went straight to the sink to clean up. Black mud and dried blood crusted his fingertips and caked the callused whorls of his knuckles.  He used the round of strong-smelling soap he kept for…

Color Wheel

21182118 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.