A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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 ... [+]

“Go kill somebody,” said one of the boys.
“Go kill yourself!” A burst of laughter.
“That’s stupid!” said Dimitur.
“Disappear then, ah!” another one said.
“We’re ... [+]

He just wished it would all end. The unbearable pain. The countless sleepless nights. The tears. The heartache.
There seemed to be no light at the end of this tunnel. Elizabeth had meant the world ... [+]

I never saw the star my great-aunt gave me, but I could feel it. It was like a warm heartbeat pulsing between my hands. It didn’t burn me— “Stars don’t burn,” Aunt Naomi said, “they just ... [+]

“We are all just walking each other home.” - Ram Dass
“In all that I am, I am art first.” This was my opening line as I shamelessly flirted with you over drinks that night. You had ... [+]

He sat behind the desk in his office with his eyes closed, leaning slightly back into the chair. He held something in his left hand, resting it lightly against his temple. With his right hand he ... [+]

In early October, in the forests of West Virginia, where the light of dusk fall is suffused with the red and green landscape of evergreen and oak, he carved a path along the mountain side too narrow ... [+]

Mr. Stesso was annoyed.
The 7:30 bus was late and an unshaven man with a large bag took the seat across from him two stops in. The bag cramped Mr. Stesso’s legs, and he could smell onions ... [+]

There were two kinds of creatures. Those of darkness, and those of light.
They lived in their separate worlds––those of darkness stepping from shadow to shadow, and those of light from sunbeam ... [+]

Your eyes are green like freshly sprouted leaves, Noah wrote as John Denver's “Annie’s song” played tenderly in the background. No, that’s wrong. Her eyes aren’t the pale green of summe ... [+]

Her blossoms open as the dawn warms her branches. “The purpose of this tree,” I sigh to myself, “is simply for the nourishment of animals’ bodies, and nourishment of my soul” A home to a ... [+]

She can hear a lot in the silence.
The surprise, for one, from her teacher, as he looks at the jumble of letters on his roster.
The confusion, as he looks from her first name to her last, unsure ... [+]

This is a story of a girl named Chartreuse. She wore overalls with great big buttons on the front--bright, colorful plastic ones that matched her bright, colorful socks. Her socks were striped and ... [+]

The first day of the apocalypse, life in Accra was business as usual. Somewhere, miles away, politicians’ scrambled voices were heard on rarely-used airwaves. The voices' owners sweated through ... [+]

The books in the library are organized by color, not topic. It’s annoying for humans like Stef, who can’t see anything lower than red or higher than violet. She walks into the library already ... [+]

My roommate wanders into the kitchen just in time to see the pancake tower collapse.
Well, “collapse” might be a bit strong. I like the word “collapse” for its dramatic value, the ... [+]

My reflection is staring at me again.
Now I know what you’re thinking: “Of course it is!” you say, chuckling to yourself and thinking I must be an ignorant child, or perhaps or an elder whose ... [+]

It was in late April when I first moved.
I’d toured the space before signing the new lease. It was a studio. Small, but comfortable, with a window looking out over a small street intersection ... [+]