A New Kind of Literary Pulse

"It happened again," Myriam said, as she entered the room. "I screwed up. I'm sorry."       She collapsed on the couch, head in her hands. "I just wanted a sip. I thought I had a handle on this ...  [+]

momofgale: My husband left us, and now my 12-year-old daughter is depressed. How can I help her? Top Answer: 15 upvotes 2 downyvotes  cityyouthcounselor: Your daughter is grieving and likely feels ...  [+]

The old woman opened her eyes, blinked a few times, and sat up in bed. She turned this way and that, peering at the objects in the small room: a low, narrow bed with fairytale figures carved in the ...  [+]

Your baby is due in two weeks. Naturally, I'm over the moon about this, but I'm also feeling a bit sentimental . . . hence this letter.   So here I am at the kitchen table, thinking about you and ...  [+]

There's a relief that comes with revealing things down to their minutiae; small gasps of relief make space in the bedroom for the proverbial elephant. I do have a good husband. He's the kind that does ...  [+]

"Three of hearts," the demon says. He's lounging on Joseph's bed, deck of cards in his hands and shirt riding up over his stomach. He glances up, fangs flashing in a bright grin as if he can feel ...  [+]

The brand-new baby is screaming. In French.
In German.
No, in French. It's definitely in French.
It isn't obvious, at first. It's not like she's screaming for a Weiner schnitzel or demanding a ...  [+]

The sun struck my eyes as I rubbed the sleep off them. I stretched and yawned and felt the air. The little hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight. I couldn't help but smile because deep inside ...  [+]

Tracy Jo Freely climbed a tree one day. A plum tree. The big plum tree at the end of Miro Street.
"When are you coming back down?" her parents asked her an hour later.
"Never," said Tracy Jo.
He ...  [+]

He couldn't say exactly when it fell off, was sometime during the night when he was asleep. But when he woke up in the morning, the ring finger of his left hand was off, tucked underneath the pillow ...  [+]

Some Bright Spark tells Crazy James the dog will make his fortune. Says the mutt can smell buried treasure like a pig snuffling out truffles. Of course, James doesn't know the first thing about ...  [+]

We spent hours at the store. Allison examined each animal one by one. She studied their movements, their noises and their smells. She looked at their feathers, spots, fur patterns, and colors. She ...  [+]

Jude always ordered hot coffee when he was falling apart. He leaned back in his booth and pressed his hands into the porcelain, trying to drink in the heat through cold fingertips. He couldn't taste ...  [+]

I saw them once, when I was little. Maybe age four or five.
The tree on the other side of the fence had branches stretching over our garden. It was too tall for me to reach the succulent, juicy ...  [+]

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 ...  [+]

Jess was only ten when the first pods washed up on the shore. She'd been standing with her toes dug into the sand, letting the cold Atlantic Ocean swirl around her ankles, daring herself to venture ...  [+]

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 ...  [+]

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 ...  [+]