Category Archives: FICTION

FICTION (1000 WORDS OR MORE)

Baby George

Baby George

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Baby George was six years old and always messing around in the street, riding his one-speed around, staring at people, shouting questions, offering unsolicited advice whenever you had your hood up. If there had been a hobo circle on the block, chafing their hands around a barrel at midnight, Baby George would have been there telling stories about his babysitter Esmeralda.more

Sharp Out of His Body

Sharp Out of His Body

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Take it to Roy just like your father did for every car he ever owned. When still young enough to want to go everywhere with Dad, he’d take you with him. The sort of man who thinks there’s something to be learned from simply being in the general vicinity of people who work with their hands and are good at what they do.more

Two Stories

Two Stories

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Mummy leans in during wood tick checks, hair in a loose braid around her head. She cups our scrotums. Bounces them. Tests our heft. Weights our worth in her hands. Cops a feel. Steals from us.more

Yacht Rock Mentor

Yacht Rock Mentor

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I see myself in the twin mirrors of Gino’s knockoff Ray-Bans. My doppelgänger reflections resemble a lead singer who got fired from the band three years ago and hasn’t been seen in public since. There is the sense Gino’s eyes are smiling behind his lenses. “We’re taking a trip,” Gino says.more

Two Things Nobody Should Touch

Two Things Nobody Should Touch

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Plant life and animals began taking hold roughly 500 million years ago. So: useful knowledge has been passed on for a reasonable amount of time, messages for communion and survival. But Anders Parly hears about as well as a small-eared weasel, and he’s just as predatory.more

Collision Theory

Collision Theory

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We’d lost so much hope after Dad’s diagnosis we weren’t even Catholic anymore. No one would say it. That we were afraid. That we were freaking the fuck out. We weren’t so unkind to put a name on our suffering or even agree that we collectively felt sorrow.more

Alas, Flask, is a Butterless Man!

Alas, Flask, is a Butterless Man!

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And of course she had asked him what he was doing that day, why he was just sitting there staring at the ocean—she had asked him twice. Once the day they got back from vacation and once on the day she left for good.more

Trouble with Oranges

Trouble with Oranges

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The trouble with oranges materializes when it’s time to access the fruit inside. That rind, so useful at protecting the orange, is a terrible ordeal to get off. How can you bite into fruit to enjoy it if you can’t even get the peel off? You need to dig your nails in, even to get the first chunk out. It takes a real commitment to dig deep enough to get through all that white stuff.more

No Good Deed

No Good Deed

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Mullinax’s immaculate uniform, his ramrod-straight posture, and his ever-present slightly-critical gaze were all carefully crafted to suggest a well-cultivated and unimpeachable military bearing, an effort that was fatally undercut the moment he opened his mouth and his thin, nasal voice escaped into the night air.more

King David

King David

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It’s how the story ought to end, though. A tale of brothers always ends with brotherhood broken—all the better if it’s broken by the other brother.more