A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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 ... [+]

The children don't understand.
The sweets they pine for are not squeezed from the machine with stripes intact. No—they must be painted on, by hand, with so much care. It is almost unimaginable ... [+]

Each morning his face flushed as he remembered the boy's words, "I want that shovel. It's just like yours." And each morning he fell to his knees, extended his arms, then plunged his hands into the ... [+]

"You didn't invite them in, did you, Sheila?"
Grandfather Jessup clasped my biceps in his feeble grip and searched my face, worry akin to fear darkening his eyes. I patted his liver-stained hand and ... [+]

The cool breeze drifts in from the Pacific Ocean through the banana plant leaves. Shadows dance across the pastel pallet of the bedspread; the charcoal nude woman looks over her shoulder. Jesus ... [+]

Seven-year-old Isabella Thompson pressed her hands into the cool, moist dirt of her grandfather's garden. She peeled away the surface like an old scab. Beneath, a reddish-brown earthworm squirmed ... [+]

In the movies, it's always an invasion. Us against them. And they've got tech that far surpasses ours. We fight in the streets and a ragtag group finds a weak spot that the advanced beings have ... [+]

To call this elegant metropolis "The City of the Ape" does it a considerable disservice, but it is impossible to avoid. Every time we speak of something being as old as the Ape, we reaffirm the ... [+]

Royals Primary has the second grade corralled into the gym. 
"What you want to do," I tell the kids, "is draw a mask that looks a lot like your face. As close as you can get it, except we're going ... [+]

August brought with it a new easy-swallow scheme by a new self-improvement mentor. Luna Rojas had measured out her life with the likes of them – detoxes, spiritual awakenings, fad diets. She ... [+]

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 ... [+]

There was a man on the doorstep, all leatherette shoes and easy iron trousers. When I say doorstep I mean the pavement between the threshold and the hazard lines of a busy junction.
His head, too ... [+]

Through the weeping household stalked a small black cat—just past kittenhood, and more gamine than gangly. She darted past the skirts of a grieving wife as the woman buried her face in a ... [+]

Once you become visible, it's hard to disappear into the shadows again, but Hank White was doing his level best. His life depended on it. People looked right through you when you were flipping ... [+]

I was chasing my little brother through the park at dusk. The whole park was filled with restless families waiting for the fireworks to start. My brother halted in his grass-stained diaper. "God ... [+]

When we awoke, we found a great curtain of linked metal rungs had been lowered to earth from the sky. The chain mail drape connected land and sky and ran as far the eye could see, across the ocean ... [+]

With a fresh kill in tow, the hunter made his way back to camp through the snow-covered forest. The weight of the stag labored his every step. A cold snap hit. Sharp, biting winds whipped icy ... [+]

It came to him suddenly, as he ran down the street screaming and on fire, that he was making a spectacle of himself.
After all, this was a modest neighborhood of well-maintained lawns and sensible ... [+]

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 ... [+]