Stories tagged flash

Yalta Pas de Deux

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The Count was used to boredom but he had reached the point where he was even bored with boredom.

Radioactive Rain

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It’s an almost mystical experience, walking in the warm, radioactive rain. It’s a rare moment of peace, a gathering of breath before the next storm, before the next wave of panic, before those frozen in shock come to themselves and rush through the stree

Dear Wigleaf

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I want nothing, he says.

Visiting Sally

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Buddy was in a garage band. They were pretty good. “Soul Harbor“ they called themselves.

The Longfellow Bridge Diaries: Part 2

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They sway from his hips, the torn knapsack, and the corners of the pushcart

Shot in the Saddle

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He pointed his gun at my son’s head as I held my son in my arms and hoped whatever he found on the other side would be worth this insane hate blob bullshit.

The Wrong Way to Market a Small Business: Part I

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I'm looking to go out this Saturday, just this one night, and have a good time because I'm normally a good girl.

Dirty Business

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After college, after summer, came the cubicle. She kept gladiola in a tall vase on her desk: yellow and apricot, colors that buzz.

Mother Lies

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Yesterday, my boy was wild. He whooped and circled, dodged the tall thin trunks of Longleaf Pines. Bare feet stamped a forest floor soft with the dead and dying. Here and there, a sharp pine cone brought a yelp

Spray-Tans in the 70s

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When LuAnn turned eleven, she hit the wall. “Eleven’s when it happens,” LuAnn says to the stylist teasing Amber’s hair into a high, shimmering web.

Flying

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During the winter, some of the fellows went to a rink to ice skate, and one time Good Blindy went with them. His friends got Fred outfitted with a pair of rented skates and turned him loose on the ice.

The premature ending of Annie MacLeod

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I was gutting mackerel when they came for me, my fingers dipping in and out of rainbow'd bellies, trailing pink as I cried for dad, and island life carried on. My mother, proper in mourning black, stuffed me under a pile of nets when she heard them riding…

Separation Anxiety

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She dreams he is coming home. A flicker of light upon a spine, he is floating toward her over food courts and luggage carousels, through time zones pocked with stoplights and the bulge of alternate lives. They never travel together -- like the royals, they say.…

Frozen Chicken

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One of the pieces, I noticed, had the real shape of a miniature chicken, its mohawk, pin legs, and small definition of wing. “Look at that,” I said to my friend. And just then, the wing twitched.

The Tamarack Swamps

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Last night, in a tavern called Wits End, we dropped quarters into a console, sized and shaped like an old TV.