When Sarah first started working at McDonald’s as a teenager, she had tried to tell her father what it was really like, how bad, and her father, who was white-haired and bitter even then, after her mother, sick of his misery, had left him, had said, “You think you got it hard? You just look at me. When you got my problems, then you can complain, understand?”… Continue Reading
I started following Cindy because I wanted to see what bad things happened to her.… Continue Reading
CAT 272D coming in hot with a birch for the trim of a dental office. This thing moves like she’s on fire, gets up to a mile an hour, everyone checking out the skid steers. With her blade off, she’s a beauty—bumble-yellow, and me standing in the hatch, pushing the lever as far as she… Continue Reading
We are Vikings. Tonight we raid. We feast and drink and pillage, of course. Descend upon this city like a scourge of locusts. Vikings! Fearsome! Regard our helms. Yes, we recognize the historical inaccuracy of the horns.… Continue Reading
I had trouble cutting off the heads so they kicked me out of the program. That’s what you want to know, right? I mean, why else does a grad student in biology end up mopping floors at a mountainside observatory? It certainly isn’t the salary.… Continue Reading
The last time I saw you, I didn’t know I’d miss who I was before the last time I saw you.… Continue Reading
At best, he reasoned he had maybe seven years before he became what all sharp-witted, outspoken, unsuccessful men became: a divorce, a hairline, and a collection of entertainment electronics growing ever harder to manipulate.… Continue Reading
He would stand on the porch and curse the trains in the distance and then move to the meadow and sit still, so to watch the deer moving slowly through the long grass, and then he would go to the edge of the pond at night and look at the beautiful moonlight mixing like oil into the pond water and he would think about putting a bullet straight through his brain and sinking to the moss at the bottom of the water.… Continue Reading
We’d been cutting weight for weeks, wearing garbage bags in the sauna and running a few miles two or three times a day. I’d already shucked fifteen pounds just to save space for booze, but I started to worry Mikey would be a downer all night. Worst thing about a guy like that—he gets you worried you did something wrong, like all his problems are your fault.… Continue Reading
Everyone is nice here. They tell me Olivia might be coming any day to visit me. And they say to just relax and look at the garden outside. So I relax like any ordinary man would. I like it here out in the country. There are flowers of all kinds. Some nights I lean out of the window and urinate on the Sea Holly. It keeps growing. I keep waiting. One day a truck will show up, and Olivia might get out of it. … Continue Reading