Paul had pointed out my mother’s belongings to her when we first arrived—her needlepoint pillowcases, her porcelain figurines. I couldn’t say if she’d been fooled, but I wasn’t. When we got outside, it was a relief to breathe fresh air.… Continue Reading
The daughter was an anxious thing. She thought ghosts with massive cocks lived in her shower. She didn’t know how sex worked. An older boy down the street kissed her. She thought this made her pregnant. She thought she’d been had.… Continue Reading
Philosophers wonder about the tree that falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, but writers carry their own dilemma–mainly, is a story still a story if you never share it? I thought about this in the years that followed. Aside from being an alcoholic and working one worthless job after another, thinking was about all I could manage during those years.… Continue Reading
His parents called him Little Rambo because he liked watching Stallone manhandle the bad guys on an old VHS tape. He rewound the tape over and over until he copied Rambo’s posture the right way and shot his own little arrow through the air into mimosa trees lining their property. He ran through the woods and jumped over fallen pine, charging after imaginary enemies, calling out and telling them that he was coming for them.… Continue Reading
With Alfie, sometimes you had to let him run himself out, the same way you did those big trout that used to choke the streams around here. Pull back too hard and it’s over. Better to let them go. Sometimes, though, you let a fish run like that and it means you’re going on a run yourself… Continue Reading
I knew this fucking writer who every time he wanted to write something he’d go way deep in the zone and live the shit hard. I asked him do you call it method writing or some shit and he chased me with a butcher knife.… Continue Reading
Every atom in my body pulled me towards the door of the sports bar, urging me to sit on the closest stool, sink into the cracked vinyl, and drink. And drink and drink and drink. Order a shot and let it rip through me like a chainsaw, spilling my guts all over the floor. … Continue Reading
There was nothing to slide off her finger. No reason to reach out to Toby’s empty hand, turn it up, and set something in the middle of his warm palm. Nothing gleamed in the dim winter light. The ring was on a baggage cart, on the tarmac beyond the window, packed in Toby’s suitcase. But she knew it was coming.… Continue Reading
Buster and Buddy, the inseparable pair. “Look,” people would say, “There goes Buster and Buddy.” At least that was how whoever gave them their nicknames imagined it at the outset, when they were still too young for the outlines of who they would be to come into focus.… Continue Reading
Phonesy Johnson’s child, Phineous, is such a DICK!, the blog’s caption read. He wants to play ball, but Dad is CLEARLY so busy reporting to GOD that he cannot spend these 30 minutes providing his undivided attention.… Continue Reading