It was a wonder the neighbors didn't complain. And I know it's irrational, maybe even paranoid, but I imagined the old guy upstairs must have heard me crying lately and was mocking my
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"Who are you?" her mother asked. "I'm your daughter, Alice." "I know that. But I mean, who are you?" Her mother's eyes locked onto hers; she was clutching Alice's eyes. What did she mean
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Emilio's mother was long-practiced in the art of summoning a saint. For a burn, she'd appeal to the apostle John. It was John who got the call twice a day for a year when Emilio was
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The last time I saw my father he was wearing a toupee that looked like a year's worth of dryer lint, a worn-out Carolina t-shirt, the blue almost white now, green golfing shorts, and penny loafers
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I never thought I would end up like this – like a tabloid horror story. Someday I bet I'll be discovered dead, here in my tiny, piss-scented apartment, being devoured by my seventy cats. Thing is
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When did my heart harden? How did empathy slip away? Dr. Lindelson pondered these questions in the spacious office where she had practiced psychotherapy for forty years, since she completed he
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My father was a somniloquist; he only talked to me in his sleep. Lured at night by his one-sided conversation one room over, I would escape the cot I'd grown out of, gaze at my sleeping mother, and
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For all his life, Frank had been at war with the willows. They sprouted in and around the stream, clogged the irrigation ditches, and choked off the water flow. His land, a narrow plain between
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When they first moved in, the forest was big and lush behind the apartment building. It was the entire view through the kitchen window, standing at the sink washing dishes. Birds were often in the
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Of the over 5,000 numbers in the English language, it is the number 14 alone that has come to hold a special place in my heart. I'm not a superstitious woman, or a woman at all for that matter. I am
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The old man is watching a seagull eviscerating a crab. The decapod crustacean probably was handsome in his youth but not any longer. Does he wish he could scream? Or is it better to be stoic and
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Freddie left the red and white cannon at speed. He whizzed over the open-mouthed crowd in a graceful crescent arc and was quite frankly bored, bored, bored.
"Yeah," Darius said into the phone as Jessica, the receptionist, made no attempt to disguise her eavesdropping. "I just finished the work-trade shift and will take a class with Hannah. After, I'll
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Randall stood before his bathroom mirror – gazing at the enormous, glistening dome that was his head. Creams, lotions, infused oils, battery-powered skull caps; he had deployed them all in his
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The moments of lucidity were rarer and rarer, but when they came, he regaled me with tales of swallowed teeth, basement brawls, and AIDS tests administered at midnight in ramshackle midtown health
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Mamma always had a love for other people's possessions. One of my earliest memories is walking to the park, my hand firmly tucked into hers. I was an impulsive child, and likely would have darted
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