A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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 ... [+]

The meep of the alarm dragged me from the warmth of my quilt cocoon and smack into Monday morning. I had to bat at it four times before it finally stopped and I found my glasses. 6:00 A.M. and ... [+]

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 ... [+]

When did my heart harden? How did empathy slip away? Dr. Lindelson pondered these questions in the spacious office where she had practiced psychotherapy for forty years, since she completed he ... [+]

She waited for almost two days before calling the police. Even though she knew in the pit of her stomach that something was terribly wrong – her husband had never gone a single day without talking ... [+]

My father was a somniloquist; he only talked to me in his sleep. Lured at night by his one-sided conversation one room over, I would escape the cot I'd grown out of, gaze at my sleeping mother, and ... [+]

A witch wind was howling out in the desert. I was praying for a storm to scour Coaling Depot 6 down to the ground, wipe it right off the Arizona Territory map. Apart from prayer, I still had a shot ... [+]

For all his life, Frank had been at war with the willows. They sprouted in and around the stream, clogged the irrigation ditches, and choked off the water flow. 
His land, a narrow plain between ... [+]

When they first moved in, the forest was big and lush behind the apartment building. It was the entire view through the kitchen window, standing at the sink washing dishes. Birds were often in the ... [+]

Of the over 5,000 numbers in the English language, it is the number 14 alone that has come to hold a special place in my heart. I'm not a superstitious woman, or a woman at all for that matter. I am ... [+]

The old man is watching a seagull eviscerating a crab. The decapod crustacean probably was handsome in his youth but not any longer. Does he wish he could scream? Or is it better to be stoic and ... [+]

The second house on the left. If the door is blue, you're welcome. Red, you've come too early. Green, too late.
The meaningless chant comes to me whole. I can't remember where I've heard it, but ... [+]

Freddie left the red and white cannon at speed. He whizzed over the open-mouthed crowd in a graceful crescent arc and was quite frankly bored, bored, bored. 
The large frayed net loomed up ... [+]

"I killed a man before, you know."
It's 3:12 pm, an awkward time for us to be preparing food. I'm not sure if we're making a late lunch, an early dinner, or just afternoon tea. I've been ... [+]

"Yeah," Darius said into the phone as Jessica, the receptionist, made no attempt to disguise her eavesdropping. "I just finished the work-trade shift and will take a class with Hannah. After, I'll ... [+]

Randall stood before his bathroom mirror – gazing at the enormous, glistening dome that was his head. Creams, lotions, infused oils, battery-powered skull caps; he had deployed them all in his ... [+]

The moments of lucidity were rarer and rarer, but when they came, he regaled me with tales of swallowed teeth, basement brawls, and AIDS tests administered at midnight in ramshackle midtown health ... [+]

Mamma always had a love for other people's possessions.
One of my earliest memories is walking to the park, my hand firmly tucked into hers. I was an impulsive child, and likely would have darted ... [+]

My husband's nose changed first—a nearly imperceptible spot-the-difference puzzle on a face I'd known for twenty-two years. Through our kitchen's bay windows, the morning sunlight highlighted his ... [+]

We are simple people. For us, fulfillment comes from hammering a piece of iron into a useful shape; from plowing the black soil for the new crop; from kneading the dough for the bread we all need ... [+]