Most read stories

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

21702170 views66 comments55 favs

We didn't wear shoes in the summer, except for Sunday school and church. The soles of our feet were black and tough as shoe leather.

Babies

21702170 views22 comments11 fav

“Your brain, your brain tries to make sense of things like this, specially life-threatening weird shit, so in my mind the grass was on fire and driving out swarms of invisible bees that were stinging us to death. Invisible killer bees. You don’t shoot be

Disorienteering

21702170 views00 comments00 favs

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

Siblings

21702170 views55 comments55 favs

It seems the people of this house were a happy family – The smiling faces, the children’s enthusiasm tells me as much. I wonder what happened to them.

The Death App

21702170 views99 comments66 favs

The phone owner pre-writes his or her dying words! The app stores them and releases them at the moment of his death!

Please

21692169 views1414 comments44 favs

"What I need to wear the ring for," I said to myself, "I already got his last name..."

the last thing

21692169 views33 comments33 favs

salmon maple syrup horseradish smoke detector the list read, scrawled in purple marker on the refrigerator door.

Mona

21692169 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.

The Clock Man's Trouble

21692169 views77 comments22 favs

A lowing cow cracked open the darkened room like the yawn of a gravid alien.

Smashed Idol

21692169 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. …

Arcana Magi Memorial - c.5

21692169 views11 comment00 favs

Azure became silent. She never thought of her death before, nor thought about actually fighting creatures and saving people’s lives.

A Selection From Einstein's Letters

21682168 views22 comments11 fav

My dear Papa: I don't care to join you on holiday. Last summer when I came you and Frau Himmelfarb played "Wildlife Management" so late into the night that I got no rest.

Wounded Knee

21682168 views11 comment11 fav

“They picked me up in their spaceship about noon,” Austin Grantham says to me while pulling up an apple crate to use as a stool.

one dozen haiku

21682168 views1111 comments99 favs

strumming on the pipe/blowing on the lute's body/drumming on the horn.

Common Sense

21682168 views33 comments22 favs

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

Tattooed Hands

21682168 views11 comment11 fav

A 1960’s of walking sugar beet fields to remove the rogue bolters by hand and on other days painting the ironwork of cattle sheds with red oxide. Then a 1970’s when the self-inking explosion of tattoos on his hands and then his body began.

Momo and Me

21682168 views00 comments00 favs

Momo told me not to mind her, but I did. At night, after he'd tucked me in, I could hear him on the phone in the living room, talking for a long time. Early this morning he woke me up and gave me my backpack. ‘Put some clothes in here', he said. ‘We're going on a trip.'

Layers on a Cold Night

21682168 views88 comments22 favs

Later that night, he lay his shivering children in his own bed, the bed that betrayed and abandoned him just a few years ago. It will protect them now.

The Wish

21672167 views00 comments00 favs

Now coins used for wishing are not like coins used to purchase bread or carrots. Coins that have been invested with the magic of hopes and desires are special and have special properties. The difference between wishing coins and ordinary coins is very subtle.

The Intercom

21672167 views33 comments11 fav

I have never met Joe’s brother, of course.

Epithelial Sample

21662166 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…

The winter I was going to meetings

21662166 views66 comments22 favs

It’ll die in there and the stairwell’ll stink for weeks, Greg says in the car. We’re quiet, considering that.

Pandora’s Box

21662166 views33 comments44 favs

I’m going to stop there, before the darkness sets in.

Etude, Prelude, Nocturne, Polonaise

21662166 views2323 comments1515 favs

proving little more/ than the player’s keyboard dexterity.

Why'd You Come Back?

21662166 views00 comments00 favs

But there, up the street, just coming into the corner of the window, someone was in the middle of the road. Walking literally down the middle, dragging one leg like it was heavy or broken, carving a fat line next to the skinny one the good one made.

The Spider and the Corpse, Or, The Corpse and the Spider

21662166 views00 comments00 favs

The corpse lay silently in his open casket. Dressed in the finest silken suit. Italian. Rubber skin pulled over his bones. Arms folded in eternal prayer.

Waiting for His Wife

21662166 views33 comments33 favs

"Dad, I already told you about your wife. She’s not coming."

Picking

21662166 views2424 comments1313 favs

You hear the thrum of blowflies first...

The Field Guide: Olivetti

21662166 views88 comments33 favs

When you last produced writing on a manual typewriter, was it before or after your first sexual experience, or maybe during? Manual or otherwise. Which do you recall with more enthusiasm...

On " Thinking outside the box."

21652165 views1313 comments1111 favs

Love to. Really would. …