My father was a doctor. We never got the doctoring bug. He never spoke to us about medicine. Instead, he took us on road trips and taught us to play catch, even me. When we were little, he would read ... [+]
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 ... [+]
Long ago, an incorporeal god of light named Belgrin flew over the face of the earth searching for new and interesting objects to illuminate. When he found a young woman named Isil, he stopped. He was ... [+]
He had earned the stamp of "loser" in his father-in-law's eyes. Worse, he was less a man to his wife Jean. When a possum tried to move in a few months after they purchased their little two-bedroom ... [+]
After I left Tom, I rented a house next to a cemetery. My mother offered to help me move. Standing in the gravel lot where I parked my car, she regarded the one-story clapboard partially hidden in ... [+]
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 ... [+]
There was no sunlight that day, and flowers with banners naming the giver had no aroma. The Godfather theme music played in Maria's head while a cast of characters, like sepia photos in her mother's ... [+]
My friend Matty believed he could fly. "I have the cape and everything," he told me one afternoon. We were playing knights and dragons in his backyard when he pointed to the roof.
"You want to
... [+]
She danced naked in the rain, her palms upward to accept the droplets of moisture. Captivated by her own imagination, lost in a world of her own creation, a world where outsiders weren't welcome ... [+]
Harold Gates slowed the snow-topped yellow taxi and edged it along the slushy curb to a stop where she stood, shivering in a tattered wool coat in a January blizzard on the steps of her unlit ... [+]
Near midnight she pedals her rented bike past Checkpoint Charlie. Vacant, but suitably restored, the off-white, utilitarian guard box occupies the middle of the street, protected from a barrage of ... [+]
This job is a grand. We're supposed to deliver the piano from a suburban chateau into a self-storage facility. Why doesn't matter. Pick-up address, how many floors down; delivery address, how many ... [+]
"She's a difficult pleasure," I said of my ex-wife. I was standing at the front door of her house, talking to her new partner, Sammy, a woman. My ex-wife, Lily, was not there.
We both took in
... [+]
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 ... [+]
Straight out of high school Mick's uncle landed Mick and me second-shift jobs at a textile factory. I asked Mick what the company manufactured. Gigantic rolls of something, he said. From three until ... [+]