A New Kind of Literary Pulse

There's nothing I love more than eating. Mmm, yes. Fat Boy loves a good meal. I enjoy the crunch, the squish, even the quietest sizzles as I grind every little particle between my molars. I cherish ... [+]

The liftoff is like an elevator.
You know that feeling you get when you're going up? Like your stomach is getting left behind? It feels like that. Remember when we were kids and we were staying ... [+]

A woman who claimed to be a chimera called the library most Tuesdays, on the old line they never got around to disconnecting after the renovations. The call went straight to a yellowed phone hung on ... [+]

There is no cheerful clatter of pans, or old Beatles records spinning in the living room. No warm cinnamon smell fills the air – only burnt coffee. For a moment, I'm half expecting Papa to swoop ... [+]

"You're in New England," the man in front of me said with a British accent, so my mind—which I knew was not running completely clearly—assumed he meant that we both were in a new version of ... [+]

Fred is an arsonist—and, Fred is not an arsonist. Let me explain: Fred has thought of fire, its power and grace, for a long time. Perhaps since he was a child. He often watched fires, mesmerized ... [+]

January 26, 1906
Forty-seven days have passed and the bananas in my kitchen are still green. They remain untouched and unmoved since I brought them home from market. To my eye they appea ... [+]

My new neighbor was a hoarder. She hoarded everything. Crystals, pink bakery boxes—she even took in children. Each one was flawed: too restless, not bright enough, a daisy-shaped head. The sound ... [+]

"It's an old building," Becky said, when Peter asked her.
"Do you get them in your apartment, too?"
She'd given him a look, then, as if she thought he was trying to score an invite into he ... [+]

The old priest considered the cast-iron oil pot sitting in the corner of the immaculate kitchen. It was heavy, and his back hurt.
The trees growing on the canyon walls whispered to him. "Prepare ... [+]

The seventh day in my new flat, I found a worm in the fridge. It was flat, black and dead. I quite like interesting animals, but not this one – it looked remarkably like a leech. Where had it come ... [+]

It had been nearly fourteen years, but there you were on my morning commute. On your way to work like nothing had happened. Both of us on our ways to work as if nothing had happened.
You looked ... [+]

Our new house really felt like a home, with cockroaches and two pit bulls and a palm tree and a chain-link fence. On that first day, I heated up a can of kidney beans for breakfast and ate it ... [+]

I reached for the control strip and tapped the edit icon. Immediately, the scene changed to a woodland, dark fir trees casting long shadows beneath a heavy winter sky. For background effect, I added ... [+]

When I get home from Sunday Service, I strip my pressed white shirt in the living room. I step out of my slacks. Peel off the tight black socks. I fumble naked for my dive skin, the black and blue ... [+]

The garbage can is full again. I drag it inside and empty it over the floor, adding to the foot of water already standing in the house. The bathtub and the sinks have been running nonstop fo ... [+]

On his way out the door to a meeting with a client, the husband said, "We should have a baby," and the wife, pointing to one of the windows that overlooked the driveway, said, "We already have an ... [+]

There is a story and it goes like this. There is a tower of brick and stone, raised up like a mountain. Its peak puts holes in the bottoms of clouds. A princess sits by the window at the top, and ... [+]

When there is no water left, we'll leave. Until then, we ration what we pull from the well. Three-quarters of a bucket for drinking (a full one when the day gets above 90 degrees, which is happening ... [+]

When you are a competent old man who lives alone, you can eat what you want for breakfast. This morning I had noodles, or rather noodle soup, a favorite of mine for colder weather. Broth with ... [+]