A new kind of literary pulse

Fred tiptoed into his room and slid into his desk chair, casting a worried glance over his shoulder as he opened his laptop. Typing as quietly as he could, he logged onto Artium Obscurorum and... [+]

You know how people say “you can’t choose your relatives, but you can choose your friends?”
Well that may be true, but let me add that you can’t always choose your husband’s business... [+]

I heard it before I saw it, a jingling of bells like the soundtrack to a corny Christmas movie. Then out of the mist rolled a small carriage, round and bright as a converted pumpkin. Florescent... [+]

Joan feels remorse for having hated her toes most of her life. She inherited them from her grandmother, who had hated them too. Her grandmother had cried at the swimming pool on Joan's 11th birthday... [+]

The men who live in the woods behind my house had been getting out of hand for some time. They were all in their mid-fifties, golfers formerly, and meat eaters -- jolly men in general -- but since... [+]

I was licking salt from the rim of my glass when Asli told me that elderly pelicans are often blind. She claimed that the force generated from smacking the water during a dive (and the fact that... [+]

Probably I shouldn't have looked in that NO ADMITTANCE HIGH VOLTAGE DANGER OF DEATH door. I was loitering on the ramp to the #7 subway train at Grand Central Station. I didn't want to go home to... [+]

We’re always asking for too much in this office. First it was raspberries. Now it is kiwis. The kiwis roll around on the table in our office kitchen then rot.
At work, I sit on the second floo... [+]

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... [+]

“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... [+]

Rule Number 1: When asked about your parentage, give suitably vague answers.
 
It was Jimmy Doogan, a boorish kid with freckles spread like flak across his face, who had been the first to... [+]

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... [+]