Jake lay in the darkness, the sun creeping under the shade...thinking why should he get out of bed. He had no place to go, no one to see and nobody would be coming to visit. He probably wouldn't ... [+]
Jake lay in the darkness, the sun creeping under the shade...thinking why should he get out of bed. He had no place to go, no one to see and nobody would be coming to visit. He probably wouldn't ... [+]
First thing every day, I count out the same colorful cocktail of medications into Mother's four containers: morning, midday, evening meal and nighttime. Two pink pills shortly after waking up, and ... [+]
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 ... [+]
He was reaching for the top shelf then stopped. He moved his eyes to the next, lower shelf down and chose a jar. His hair was sheet white and his body frame resembled my father, tall and heavy set ... [+]
The dryad who lives inside the oak tree has been terrorizing the condo building dwellers for generations. She throws acorns and pours sap and drops pollen on their cars, and causes severe allergies ... [+]
She didn't think herself a racist. She'd had black school friends, worked with black women at the restaurant, and watched Oprah daily.
But when her seven-year-old, white daughter brought home a
...
[+]
The house seems incongruous on the immaculate street. There are weeds invading the spaces between the broken tiles that lead up to the flaking front door, and a plastic bag rustles, as it struggles ... [+]
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 ... [+]
Mr. MacInnes had decided it was time to talk to Brian about his appearance. He didn't want to, lord knows he wasn't a stickler for such things, but lately it had all gotten a bit out of hand. It ... [+]
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 ... [+]
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 ... [+]
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
...
[+]
"In their search for ‘devil's gold,' as they call it, about 300 miners make a daily climb two miles up the mountain, then head downward more than 900 yards into the volcano, where the sulfu ... [+]
I got the idea from one of your old stories. Building golems out of river mud and whatnot. Except I didn't want a golem. I just wanted you back by my side.
Peddling clayware in the sweltering
...
[+]
Emma pads through the living room, over the thick, ivory carpet, and settles on the chaise longue with her wineglass. As she tastes the cold white wine, her gaze falls to the fields on the valley ... [+]
I sat staring deep into the flames, listening to voices stirring the wind around me. Soft footfalls pressed through the grass stalks, rustling gently. Though I couldn't see them, I knew they were ... [+]