Most recent stories

Panthera pardus

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A cruel panther gets its prey.

Between Our Words

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There are problems we lovingly fashion . . .

Butcher Knife

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When I was young I used to carry a butcher knife to bed. My grandmother placed it in my small hands before tucking me in.

What is your favorite body part?

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Hideki likes the uncomfortable face one makes when trying to "break wind" after eating too many dried potatoes.

Firefly Squids

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On the fisherman boat, we were told to place the helpless firefly squids in our mouths. I watched cheeks light up like light bulbs and I wondered how barbarism could be so beautiful.

Eden, Suburbs

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The boy peered at the rather unusual place between the girl’s legs, which was entirely more complicated than a person might be given to believe should he see it, for example, bundled in underpants or a bathing suit.

Sliver

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It was beautiful and bright and it felt so real.

Gorgeous World

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I’ve forgiven my mother; she didn’t know what she was doing. She heard voices, had visions. She imagined herself to be a prophet named Helen when her real name was Marge. When she learned she was pregnant with me she scored some Thalidomide from my gr

Puppy Love

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When it started to really sink in that Audrey might never meet Mr. Right and that she may never have the rose garden wedding, the South Pacific honeymoon or silver Honda Odyssey replete with plump-cheeked kidlets snoozing in car seats, she got an eight-we

The Color of Faith

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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.

The Good Boy

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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?

Finite Automatons in Winter Quarter

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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.

The New World

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And so we conquered.

To Be Undone

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. . . hands before your face, heart without blood . . .

A Jungle Tale

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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.

Passing Time

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A surreal conversation in a library hints at something else.

Some Advice

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Justify your metamorphasis

Telling Maybelline Jones

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Maybelline Jones is my sister, my friend, and I try to tell her the right way to be.

Arcana Magi Zero - v.1: Alysia's Saga, the Awaken

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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.

Release

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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.

Wait

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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?

The Club

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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

Fin

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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.

Floater

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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.

Cripple

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"I know," Timothy explained, "he can't use it. He's a cripple." No one else seemed to understand.

A mostly true story about the TI-83

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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,

Corvus

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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

Birth Mothers, Seeking

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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

Siam

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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.…

Peace and Love from the Middle of Nowhere

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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.