Category Archives: FICTION

FICTION (1000 WORDS OR MORE)

The Hardest Thing

The Hardest Thing

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On Opening Day of the 2007 season, Del headed east in a Toyota Corolla stolen from long-term parking at McCarran International Airport. He had four hundred thousand dollars of Mob money in the trunk, a forged driver’s license, and his single prized possession: an October 22, 1960, issue of The New Yorker signed by John Updike and Ted Williams.more

The Effigy

The Effigy

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The boy is not actually a boy, of course. It’s a metaphorical thing. He is too young to be the man and too old to be the child. It’s an arrested development.more

No One’s Gonna Drag You Up

No One’s Gonna Drag You Up

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Brogan prayed Hailee wouldn’t take on his father’s moral and spiritual weakness, his step-mother’s willfulness, prayed she would someday find a man like Leonard, who would cure her of the modern world’s stupidity and cruelty.more

The Hole

The Hole

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When his parents kicked him out of the house, saying they could not abide the path he had chosen, what had always been a hunch hardened into firm knowledge, the very idea of paths, of one thing leading to another, being nothing more than something folks concocted to make themselves feel better, nothing more than puffery.more

Unnamed Storms

Unnamed Storms

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He knows she would never allow him into her life, but he dreams of her tripping into his: reveling in sloth on her days off, doing nothing but eating, napping, surfing the web, masturbating to porn, binging TV—the rewards for making it through another week’s shifts.more

West

West

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She hoped that Jack might finally tell her something new, maybe even reveal some forthcoming thing, like a portent. A vision as terrifyingly clear as the western sun. But neither of them possessed a knack for seeing the future.more

Babel

Babel

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We were the boys in the corduroy pants, but that made too much sense! We needed to confuse people, like God confused Babel, we confused our parents, our teachers.more

Spiral

Spiral

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She spits through lips painted green. She means disrespect but I see DNA. In spit is a stamp that can clone or convict you. I suppose that an artist’s work, to its maker, does both. I can understand the desire for distance.more

A Wife Who Turned Into A Fish

A Wife Who Turned Into A Fish

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After 40 years of marriage, Charles’s wife turned into a fish.more

The Old Square

The Old Square

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Two months after he lost his job teaching algebra at St. James Preparatory School for Boys, and one month after his wife left with the kids and the cash and the car, Clem built a bonfire.more