When they were seven, he’d taken them out to the desert and let them shoot a .38 at rusted cans. The explosions rocked them back on their heels.

I envisioned bound feet of ancient Asian women who wore embroidered slippers that hid grotesque disfigurements.

I peeled his tongue, word by contemptuous word, until he had nothing left but a scrappy shred of muscle flapping in his empty head...

“My name is Violet,” I add. I am trying to stop lying. Going without cigarettes has been easier.

He envisioned sinking his hands through his fat and pulling out the young, sinewy, long-haired Brendan Yin, the man Evelyn fell in love with. The blubbery shell would fall away to the floor, like a greasy banana peel, and the real Brendan Yin would be lo

They sat before the fire and played cribbage. He was a good player, but not as good as she was.

I didn't believe in hiding secrets or broken arrows. So I told my new girlfriend, who in earnest, tried shedding pounds like ugly memories, who glued herself to my shag carpet, watching exerise videos--that I didn't sleep alone. I tried to be as sensitive as possible,…

“Woohoo! I told you it’d be as stinky as pack of copulating squids in here, Mr. Tong. We’ll have to get this mess cleaned up as soon as you’re done. Well, alright then, go ahead and look around!”

Hissing through the opening, the spirits have no place.

We crept to the edge of the cliff and stared down at Lake Travis. In this alcove, out of the churn of the speedboats and pleasure craft, the water shimmered, impossibly blue. “Didn’t you used to jump off here back when you were getting high?” Ryan said

The litany of tough decisions scrawled on. Stencil Gucci on no-name jeans. Buy cheap chocolate and scrape the name off. I looked over and watching the saliva encrusting in the corner of Larry’s mouth, my heart sank.

At any moment, she'll come outside to pick up the day’s newspaper. He can see it resting beneath the blooming crape myrtle, its plastic wrapper glistening with dew.

She thinks she trusts this man; she wants to trust him. His face reminds her of a man who once took care of her on an airplane when she was a kid traveling by herself.

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.

his wife had made love to another man, out of spite or love or to wake him from his conventional slumber, we never learned. We were there as a foil, a first step towards reconciliation, unction.