A New Kind of Literary Pulse

The crowd thronged around Larry as he shuffled forward. Its members shoved past him like a rushing current, heedless of courtesy in their excitement. He forgave the jostling, of course, for his mind ...  [+]

Ricky looked up at the ladder and swallowed, nervousness mingling with excitement. The tree house he’d been asking Dad to build for almost three years now was finally done. Well, all except the rope ...  [+]

“We wake with haunted eyes, waltzing through life as though we’re puppets. We are entirely aware of our strings, of their relentless pull on our aching joints and our stretched skin, but we make no ...  [+]

This looks like it could be a scene from a really sad movie. One where the girl is sitting next to the window seat, staring. The viewer watches in shallow focus. Although she knows which stop she ...  [+]

My life has been conditioned in a way that I can’t explain. I’m deep in a hole that I can’t dig myself out of. I ask myself, what is life exactly? Is it all about surviving? Is it just a waiting room ...  [+]

Just before the snow falls, the fairies lay their eggs. To you, they look like plain white berries, hanging on little green-leafed branches of shrubs. But go out at night and you will see them hatch ...  [+]

I truly hate doing the dishes, Tati thought as she regarded a teetering pile of plates and pots and coffee mugs. It was one of those insufferable, Sisyphean tasks of life that never really gets ...  [+]

Late into the night you finally return home. You open the door and step into the unlit blackness of what should have been your home. Instinctively you reach out to flick on the lights, but the light ...  [+]

Long story short, I became Public Enemy Number One.

The last 24 hours had been surreal. I, a 22-year-old college student, was declared by the state as the “the most vicious vermin eve ...  [+]

Your dichotomy of reality and transcendence destabilizes as you breathe in the image before you. Ribbons of sunlight seducing piney branches into a dance. The solemn army of trees expanding far beyond ...  [+]

Tapping her left foot onto the cobblestones, J’s nervous tick is heading into full overdrive. She takes a sip of hot coffee to attempt to calm her nerves. The sip is just a bit pre-mature, and the ...  [+]

lim·bo-intermediate state or condition.
“What do you mean Billy disappeared?”
“Well, it's as I said sir, we were all sitting in his living room, discussing different ways we could sneak past the ...  [+]

Grandma was the first one who let me hold matches. Mommy and Daddy were such scaredypants, they would yell at me just for sneaking out of the kitchen when the oven door was open.
“You could burn ...  [+]

The chrysanthemums were striking in their glory. Yellows and whites, kissing softly, heads bent together in reverence. Oh, Ria wished to be one of those flowers, heads bent in secret with another. ...  [+]

Hey, I’m. . . um. . . I’m not sure what to do. I never thought this would actually happen. What to do, what to do. . . I guess, ugh, this is awkward. Did you hear that? Do you hear? Or do you see what ...  [+]

He stood, leaned against the jeep, toes pointed toward the desert horizon, breaths filtered by dust. His eyes moved over the still, illuminated sky. He glanced down and began examining the oddly ...  [+]

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

A portrait of a young lady, waiting in the garden next to her house. A frozen memory of her face as she sits on a swing behind a tree. I first ...  [+]

“Do you know what happens in the jungle?” the Grandfather asked.
Little Kendi shook his head as he fluffed his pillow and laid his head down.
“Too many children have gone into the jungle and not ...  [+]