Ivy awakens, sudden and ungentle, to stretch, yawn, and slap at her phone, a haphazard attempt to quell the 6 a.m. alarm she had forgotten to disable the night ...
When Stan’s neck craned toward Madison’s screen, I could glimpse the inside of his collar, the color, a few shades darker than Stan’s skin, of mottled seagulls....
As you eat your eggs, you remember you will never get to see your wife again. This is not the first time you remember. You remember it every day when you buff y...
Marvin was certain he was good at something; unfortunately, others were equally certain he was not.
Specifically, the thing he was certain he was good at but...
Erin rolls her cat, tucked inside his stroller, onto the back patio. They sit together in the shade while she reads a book about how to conquer fear of flying. ...
“Get your dirty boots off my desk,” Frank snarled. He stared hard at the other man.
Roy put out his hands. “Easy, man, easy …”
Roy’s boots thumped down ...
They got a deal on the apartment because it was in the basement of the building, which lent an eerie unfinished look to the dirty, threadbare carpet and crackin...
Who could say no to these pieces of Nineties pop culture history? Set of 5 32oz cups contains original designs of George Michael, MC Hammer, Diana Ross, Scorpio...
I’ve finally arrived at my first school dance and all I can think about is that Dylan is here. I spotted him ahead of me in line while I was waiting for tickets...
Drunk Man was in for a long night. First, there was that robbery, down on 25th street. A gang of hoodlums holed up in Pet Mart, brandishing machetes at the gerb...
Don’t wear fuck-me pumps to brunch, you said. Too late. No time to go home before coming here, this fancy place on the waterfront. Skaters on a rink by the rest...
At home, my neighbor's spouse is slowly dying. Eleanor and Milton, Milton is the dying one. Though I suppose that one of them is not really dying much more than...
Phil opened his eyes to see glass just inches from his face. He looked left, then right. He rotated his eyeballs three hundred-sixty degrees. He saw glass in al...
“The giants of old San Juan grabbed the boys by the ankles and swung them to smash open the piñatas. With the boys out of the way, the girls calmly gathered the...
Fans scream and dance as the pop-punk/emo-punk/emo-pop band, Pluto’s No More, plays up on stage in front of them. Consisting of five members, theirs is a group ...
When I was little, I'd point at the sky and ask Mama if I could have that cotton candy fluff. Sometimes white, sometimes pink, and occasionally orange, they'd c...
On late night after a track meet, and coincidentally a Royals game, my friends and I went on a run to IHOP—the only restaurant still open at 11:30 PM. As we sta...
The bugs in Castor’s head writhed beneath his skull. He threw his burner at the rock-covered ground and screamed, his strained voice reverberating across the la...
“When I got back to my car I was like, wait… if I didn’t have a boyfriend, were we about to kiss?”
Carissa hadn’t planned on telling any of her friends back ...
Thank you for sending along the house inspection report. I’m sorry it’s taken so long for me to respond. My ex-wife and I had to discuss it, which took more ene...
One hungover morning wasn’t that different from any other hungover morning. At least that’s what Leslie like to tell herself. She struggled out of bed as her al...
For nearly every night of the past year, Simon Page has stumbled, half-blind and terrified, through the morphing liquid maze of horrors that are his chronic nig...
Marlene didn’t know a lot of things, but she knew enough. She knew an average number of things to an average degree of knowledgeability. If you fall asleep befo...
Something was wrong with Mr. Fleeter.
He was usually so approachable, happy to talk with anyone. Unlike other teachers who struggled to connect with student...
“Don’t move, OK?”
“OK.”
Agh.
Couldn’t she just put it on the stupid countertop? Spices do smell good, though.
I need to shower, clean Harley’s ear, ...
Your third-highest-grossing film got shit reviews.
You shouldn’t be surprised, really: It’s just another day of doing exactly what it was you said you wanted...
Your grandmother had written it down on a blue note card she must have kept in her old mahogany secretary desk. You remember the desk because of the way its wri...