True or false: Dan still doesn’t hate her? 1. He has papered his walls with abstract prints of multi-coloured koi? True. 2. Like most adults, he talks a lot about not feeling sufficiently caffeinated and how things were in his day? False. 3. As a child, he told his case worker that every rented family felt the same. He meant it too? True. … Continue Reading
Every night I go to bed, I ask her what If I don’t wake up, what If I die in my sleep from a heart attack, and all she does is groan and roll over and tell me to stop being so dramatic. Sometimes I wish that’s exactly what would happen so she could feel stabbing guilt.… Continue Reading
Rather than someone she’d slept with during orientation, and twice more their first semester, he was now the kid brother she’d give life advice and hand-me-down Looney Tunes sweatshirts to.… Continue Reading
What he knew about feelings: That you swallow them, push them down into your intestines so they can’t escape, so they lodge in that warm pink space where they belong—not on the street, not on people’s faces all stricken and blubbery and slobbering. … Continue Reading
Bronco Bill no longer felt the need to mount a bull just to feel the hands of other men on his body while he braced himself in the chute. His whole life the only way he could get close enough to other men was to prepare for violence.… Continue Reading
Last time, he ate the goldfish in the psychiatrist’s office, but he sensed this was a bit tame, bordering on someone acting like they were having a breakdown rather than actually in the midst of one. Everyone had their own opinions of madness these days, it was like some bizarre performance review where you had to prove your insanity hadn’t slipped.… Continue Reading
As the waves pushed out all the thoughts from his mind, an image like a dark and starry night started to take hold for him. Deep inside his concentration, an image came to him. One he hadn’t expected. “Mr. Whiskers?”… Continue Reading
I wonder how long it’ll take for ’em to come on over the hill. I’ve got good cover. I can hold out a while. My hands are shaking. Not from fear, but from what I’ve got running through me. I never thought a night out would lead to me ending up here. She had every right to do what she did. I didn’t. They’re gonna find that out.… Continue Reading
People all over the world have been visibly satisfied for decades. Benito Mussolini was visibly satisfied. A lot of dictators are visibly satisfied, mostly with themselves, right up until they get strung up on lampposts, or shot in the head, or whatever.… Continue Reading
The sleeping bag had writhed, a kissing thing, a succubus, mad like a salted eel. I’d seen that. For days now I’d seen it and let it happen. Too scared to scream. What a stupid terror, I hold in me, shrinked cold and half-gone. Tonight it dines.… Continue Reading