Most recent stories

This Is the End

13521352 views55 comments55 favs

I guess you’re gone now That’s okay I guess I can live with my own ghosts I had no idea What it meant But now I do It meant I was standing At the end of everything And did not know it

Ghost

18171817 views55 comments55 favs

You want to be there, but not noticed. Alive, but not too alive. Because that's how you feel every day. Like an apology with legs.

the total compiler

11921192 views33 comments33 favs

The idea of an infinite textual universe occurs in many places in the works of Jorge Luis Borges. The contexts and permutations of language, which others had held to be perhaps infinite (allowing themselves to use such an imprecise term), that…

Drive-by Neighborhood Fiction Flash

14061406 views99 comments77 favs

It's about dinner time. My neighborhood is in Sa-bur-bia. Driving my gold 2007 Malibu i pass Chick. She notices me and stares standing in front of her house. We were friends about ten years ago. Chick is still divorced. Tall skinny legs. Educated blu-ish eyes. Wet…

What Happened To The Rain Dance?

10251025 views22 comments11 fav

The water quality will give you a hint

The Mommy's Girl

20212021 views1313 comments1111 favs

Her mother dressed her like a little girl would dress a doll.

Milkmen

13421342 views77 comments77 favs

I can barely pick out the numbers on the houses

One Star

964964 views22 comments11 fav

...somehow that light has found me.

Five Acts

10761076 views55 comments55 favs

The television was playing reruns of Mr. Ed, but it was hard to hear because of the flock of birds in the palm tree. I’d sometimes imagined the birds coming through the window, a swarming of pink cotton mouths, mawing everything in sight.

Linear Critic

14791479 views1111 comments88 favs

8) An exercise online calls for the first sentence on page 45 of the book nearest you as a suggested description of your love life. The book 9) nearest me still is _The Quarterly_, 1, spring 1987, that I have on my desk in preparing to write an essay.

An Orb for a Better World

11511151 views11 comment11 fav

Max sighed. Solving for x was boring, so mind numbingly boring that he didn't notice the flickering blue light hovering in his room. It crackled and popped, growing until a shimmering rectangle stretched from floor to ceiling.A hand pushed out from the rectangle, and a…

Professor University

10931093 views22 comments22 favs

Is this a tenure track position?

Secure

11621162 views99 comments77 favs

This is the Minuteman tine/ of the three-tined fork// we can stick into the modern world/ when it’s done-- a MAD triad.

The Song in the American Soul

688688 views22 comments22 favs

They are riding through the wild onion of life One layer at a time Turning the world inside out Looking for the unusual patterns Inside the gaping muscle of space With its heart-pounding unnatural heat

This Outhouse Reeks

10801080 views55 comments22 favs

The bathroom had exposed rusty pipework, A minty lemonade smell, Ice in the urinal, And a wall of stone-cold mirror. She put some lipstick on, but it looked fake under the lint-covered bulb dangling overhead. She wiped off the lipstick but…

Steps

15021502 views1717 comments99 favs

He deplaned Air France flight 9 from JFK to Charles de Gaulle airport at quarter past noon.

Mauthausen

12561256 views22 comments11 fav

I was feeling a bit introspective. I was busy in my own mind assembling the history of the place and getting ready for the visit. I was naturally not someone who would cluster up with a bunch of people I had just met and had arrived to participate in this

Drought

996996 views88 comments77 favs

Everything is at sixes and sevens.

Forever Four-Eyed

15911591 views77 comments66 favs

I'm a librarian. A reader. I identify as a four-eyed person. I've always worn glasses. I got my first pair in the second grade. It was a miracle! The blurry world I'd inhabited all my life suddenly came into focus. I could see the blackboard! I could read street signs! I…

The Princess of Fillmore Street

16181618 views66 comments55 favs

So she started sneaking into people’s houses in the middle of the night. She’d just sit in the kitchen for an hour or so, and just feel the peace. Never took anything or got into anything. Just sat there silently.

On being offered a seat on the Bart train

13961396 views88 comments55 favs

Remember when I entered a room and turned heads is my youthful charm a sputtering fire in the hearth

The Dolly Boys

11111111 views11 comment11 fav

I have a fascination with Dickens and London and this was inspired by my next novel.

Alice White Loves Me Because

12551255 views88 comments44 favs

She loves you when your words leave her dirty, semi-transparent, at times, overexposed.

Anonymous Hackers

13561356 views22 comments00 favs

A university student who triggers a flash mob in the heart of Silicon Valley to prove her hacking creds finds herself in deep trouble when the colorful members of Anonymous Hackers prove their hacking creds to her.

Roadside Attraction

20452045 views2626 comments2020 favs

There is a certain stage of sobriety among men who drink every night. In that stage, they are their best selves: they write novels, fix cars, care for their young. Then they change.

Hobby Lobby

13741374 views77 comments66 favs

In human rights, a man and a woman may marry and bring forth a family. It is a civil right in the U.S. but not a human right (as far as I know) to raise a child singly without the knowledge of the other parent.

Gaza Suite

12801280 views1414 comments1111 favs

Tender bodies sizzle on the grill.

The Elevator

13541354 views22 comments22 favs

The man and the woman looked at each other almost shyly. The man flicked his eyes away self-consciously and looked outside, seeing the clouds in the distance, the smaller buildings…

Cheesecake

12651265 views1313 comments66 favs

Eric was born with three testicles.

Fifteen

12291229 views55 comments44 favs

“We could dooble date,” he said.