1711 1 0
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My best friend Khaled’s idea was, he’d set up a pool tournament. Nine-ball. Each church would send a player, and whichever church won, he’d join. Any church that wouldn’t shoot pool, he wouldn’t want to join.
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162200
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I blinked the darkness out of my eyes and saw the man again; I could smell his breath. Just like dad’s. I must have fallen asleep. My eyes felt so heavy. I was cold. Why was I cold?
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194261
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To my right, blank stares interchange with closed eyelids on an unkempt face. The minutes drip into the endless sea of night outside the window, each time creating a deeper blackness.
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172600
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196411
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. . . hands before your face, heart without blood . . .
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162300
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He awoke with a start. This was not the first time he did so. He couldn't afford these occasional bouts of sleep. And certainly not in the land of the Tsantsa hunters.
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221320
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A surreal conversation in a library hints at something else.
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118900
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Justify your metamorphasis
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212460
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Maybelline Jones is my sister, my friend, and I try to tell her the right way to be.
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4177101
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The last thing eleven year-old Alysia Perez remembered, she clenched her mother’s waist as they both turned to stone in the museum. When she opened her eyes, she was in a world of darkness.
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208400
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One of the runners was collecting bags of dead animals to bring back to the van. Nicholas looked inside one of the bags, but all he saw was a stringy mess of fur and tissue.
The runner grabbed the bag from Nicholas. He shrugged and said "hammers.
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137061
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I'm not dying. What is it called if you think you might have Hypochondria but you really don't? I'm worried that's what I have. Is it cold in here? Or is it me, dying?
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179200
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Even the stinging warmth of the Grey Goose wasn’t fun without Lisa whispering into his ear, telling him stupid little confessions that he would recite to her in singsong the day after. And she would beat her small fists against his chest solemnly with a
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168871
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She doesn’t answer. Ten minutes slide by unmolested in the anesthesia of cheap wine and resignation, the bouncers blurring and unblurring, the room dimming, quieting, the kaleidoscope of sundown giving way to the gentle sadness of candlelight.
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175430
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Just because I’m suicidal doesn’t mean I don’t care about whacking my head on some service railing ten stories down. The fact that I’m going to jump doesn’t lessen my fear of propellers or a broken back.
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179272
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"I know," Timothy explained, "he can't use it. He's a cripple." No one else seemed to understand.
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213510
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And the only time the TI-83 sees the light of day is when I'm rectifying my debit card purchases at such places as Kmart, Office Depot, Walmart, and Office Max, to make sure everything comes out even and good and perfect, a skill never learned in Trysics,
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198711
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Bracing himself against the wind, Zach gets to his feet without a thought for direction or destination. In the white forever of this place, there is no lantern to light the dark and bitter woods of memory. Even the croakers would find little use for such
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157001
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A blonde girl, her youth evident beneath a cosmetic mask of bruised eye shadow and plum lipstick, claims the seat beside me on a train. A radiant six month-old gazes out from her hip, awe-struck at life, as my own son must have been at that age. I never e
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199593
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Our city is really two cities, conjoined. One lives during the day, the other at night. Those who live and breathe daytime air call the city by one name, a name which evokes the relative newness of the place, a name with words just barely invented.…
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94700
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Miles from anywhere that mattered, he stood by the side of the road staring at the two-lane highway that outlined the edge of suburbia like a cement fence. Steam rose from the hood of his car as he sat on the ground and waited for the other shoe to drop.
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113810
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I liked E first because she knew all the words to "Alice's Restaurant." Everybody knows "American Pie," but "Alice's," that's impressive. We used to cut class in high school and drive around listening to it, and I'd try to pretend I knew the words, but I never did, so…
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208311
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And here I am again.
I chew my nails. I tap my foot. I chew my nails. I sweat. I bleed. My nose bleeds. It drips. I drip. I'm dripping through my chair.
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187220
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Every day she loves me a little less, and justifies it by saying that there is less of me to love.
At some crucial, overlooked space in our life together, I used up my compassion and started to spend hers.
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442622
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Foxes haunted her dreams. Islands full of foxes, truckloads of vixen.
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217523
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I am remembering this day for all days. Remembering. All days. Always. This is the day you threw the TV out the upstairs window. I'm remembering. Always. This is the day that started with you shaking the toaster over me so all the crumbs fell out.…
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148684
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We brought oxygen with us because we knew, everyone knows, there is no air on Mars. Everyone told us this as they waved goodbye back on Earth. Jay's mom even said, “Goodbye, honey, have a nice time and remember, there's no air on Mars. Are you aware of that?”…
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149941
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On the way home, “Friendly honk,” he said.
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266531
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In the night, a several-hundred-pound Black Bear scaled our neighbor’s back fence, bounded down the gravel footpath between our houses and, confused by the people and lights, followed his instincts up a large pine tree across the street...
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213360
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