Recommended stories

Affairs of the Heart

674674 views22 comments00 favs

The next morning, I was shaved, skinned and stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey for its untimely demise.

Good morning, Mr. Mourning!

11771177 views11 comment00 favs

Now, I am getting angry! Now you want me depressed too! GET OUT! GET OUT!

Night Raid

731731 views22 comments00 favs

The president snapped awake at three AM. He realized he was a serial killer. Highly trained and equipped killers on his orders were summarily murdering thousands of raggedly dressed people in the name of Democracy.

Johnny

11101110 views22 comments00 favs

He also had OCD. He had to kick every dog he met. Johnny killed a lot of dogs and was bitten by many others. He was a cruel bastard.

Knell Quarternion

13121312 views11 comment00 favs

The Jester sat down on the edge of his mattress. He laboured to bring one gout ridden leg up to lay across the other. The jingle bell at the tip of his pointed toe mocked each serrated movement of his limb with a jaunty tinkle. He grabbed his ankle to arrest its…

My Secret Pen Pal

432432 views11 comment11 fav

What if I let it be known that I've been enjoying a heavy correspondence with Queen Elizabeth my entire life? We began the correspondence on the very day she was coronated. February 6th, 1952. I was four years old and working as a bartender in Cheyenne, Wyoming. …

The Afterglow

985985 views11 comment11 fav

I knew we were going to fail. The night we met, when we got out of the car, I dropped my green glove in that puddle, you picked it up but it was ruined. That set the precedent for our whole life together. You can't look at me anymore. My cigarette…

cravings

799799 views22 comments00 favs

With a sigh she rubbed her face into wakefulness, and then sucked two fingers, thinking of melted cheese.

Before The Ship Leaves

573573 views22 comments00 favs

I head for the dock, and brush my fedora with a wad of Pythagorean moss. The captain is a clumsy angel with a stethoscope and a bowl of bouillon. Three months later we arrive in Cartagena. I have a headache the size of China.

Standing aloof

717717 views11 comment00 favs

I think it cumbersome to walk within a darkened room. Too awkwardly uncouth, for one with such a corpulent frame, to hug the hungry. It weighs one down, to wave airily, to wildlings By cages, and pain, made tame. Best to look away, than…

The Works

10351035 views00 comments11 fav

The woman in green doesn’t want to encounter the meter maid who is actually a man and so waits to one side at the newspaper racks as if purchasing a paper while that person writes the parking ticket (this city needs that money) and drives away in his li

Mescaline Blues

13951395 views11 comment00 favs

This is about a mescaline trip that went wrong. It happened back in the '60s and I know, the '60s have been done quite to death and nobody ever gets the trip right but--you'll like this one. Joey and…

You'll Know

10481048 views11 comment00 favs

When you see him, you'll know.That's what the prophecy was. Well, part of it, at least. The prophecy that Tabitha was to be the next Earth mother. That when she saw her partner, she would know. Keith, and his mission partner, and the elders, they had made it so. Made it…

Priming the Pump

583583 views11 comment00 favs

I saw Sharon one more time, in the summer of 1969, when man first set foot on the moon. I met her at that nightclub over on Hwy. 83, near North Avenue in Elmhurst where everyone still hung out from high school. She came back to the basement at my parent

I heard You Like the Back Seat, Honey

628628 views22 comments00 favs

It’s okay if you do

HIT AND RUN

869869 views11 comment00 favs

HE DREAMED THAT NIGHT OF A SMALL BLACK CHILD LYING INJURED IN THE STREET, UNABLE TO CRY OUT

Without Knowing It

880880 views11 comment00 favs

If this isn’t Paradise, what is?/ Your own eyes wide with/ the imagination, the knowing,/ the not-knowing of it all.

Morning in Louisiana

465465 views11 comment00 favs

Sunlight slaps the asphalt hard. Steam rises. It looks like thought. The sweet vapors of rumination.

Flo Rida!

597597 views22 comments00 favs

Ida Ho

Above the River's Edge

10851085 views22 comments00 favs

On the plains there are no cliffs, no vast mountain ranges to persuade us that we were somewhere above the world. Yearning to escape the pull of the Earth was the big dream of a plains boy…

Death (and a Girl)

748748 views22 comments00 favs

I toyed with the idea of suicide, then quickly cast it off. Death wouldn’t be interesting. Liberating, perhaps, but not interesting. I hadn’t yet lived enough to die.

Get More Protein From Your Music

783783 views00 comments11 fav

“Kids,” I say, commiserating with my partner Bink. “You can’t live with ‘em, but you can live without ‘em.”

Heroic

13591359 views22 comments00 favs

This is an older story that was inspired by research on naming conventions while trying to find record of my own ancestors in the Ukraine. I did not find them. Instead I was inspired to write this.

sirenia sirenia

747747 views11 comment00 favs

He leans back in the desk chair in his home office. He clicks on “Inbox” in his Gmail. He spins around in his chair. He clicks on “Inbox” again. As he spins again, he realizes how silly it is to keep clicking “Inbox” when Gmail…

Mother of the Earth

685685 views22 comments00 favs

On Terry’s eighteenth birthday (the summer of 1966, the same year you graduated from high school, and the year I broke up with Sharon) I took Terry out to Fox River on my dad's ski boat, and opened up my robe and showed her all there was to show of myse

.38 In the Glove Compartment

555555 views22 comments00 favs

I accidentally opened the glove compartment and stumbled upon his snub-nose .38 caliber. He saw me looking at it and smirked. “Protection,” he said, picking his teeth with a wooden toothpick after lunch. “In my line of business, you hafta have it.” “Wh

Behind the (Beekeeper's) Veil

16411641 views00 comments00 favs

While I tried to work calmly, internally it was a non-Zen zone. I was experiencing a major adrenalin rush.

Time Travel Telephone

11721172 views22 comments00 favs

And now, the weather. The Cloud Wranglers have roped three solid clouds this morning, preventing the clouds from raining iron bars onto Human Brain Storage Center #17.

The Ferry

11191119 views00 comments11 fav

The two of them stood at the long end of a pier that cut sharp into an L 25 feet out into the river. It was an old wooden pier that relished in its every crack and splinter regardless of the fresh coat of white paint that melted lazily over the rotting bo

Ennui

873873 views22 comments00 favs

I've done the math, it didn't count. All the days and years of endless boredom. Of waiting for the next best thing, trapped inside your mind like a lifetime prison sentence. Maybe one day we'll be free, maybe one day we won't feel so oppressed. But when does that day…