A New Kind of Literary Pulse

The house takes a day to dismantle. Goodwill gets the furniture. Meghan sets a ground rule for the rest: George is allowed three seconds to decide where each thing should go: in the car (to be driven ...  [+]

Josh is gone, but I see him everywhere. Even now, it's his reflection I see in the puddle as the storm brings me back to reality. I shiver. Seems I'm always cold these days. I need to get my shit ...  [+]

The witch lived alone in the shadow of the forest. Her cottage, with its crooked door and moss-covered shingles, was perched at the edge of a still, green pond with an overgrown orchard beyond. Only ...  [+]

You stare as the fence silently pulses, ready to shock curious sheep away. The pulse gives them time to retreat, to let go. If the power was continuous, you and the sheep would be stuck, glued to the ...  [+]

On his first day at the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation, twenty-five year old Masti Govind Swamy, named after the village of Masti, where his father, not he, was born, found to his ...  [+]

Your baby is due in two weeks. Naturally, I'm over the moon about this, but I'm also feeling a bit sentimental . . . hence this letter.   So here I am at the kitchen table, thinking about you and ...  [+]

They always say the final sense to go is hearing, but touch lasts right 'til the end. Not over the whole body, though; I can't feel Dot's hand in mine, but this fucking diaper itches like blazes. I ...  [+]

The realtor moves from room to room in silence. Charlotte and I follow, anxiously awaiting his verdict.   Through the kitchen, the living room, the study. Upstairs, in and out of bedrooms. He ...  [+]

Terrydale was a hamlet much too small to be located on any map, and so war came to it as it comes to such places—not through the trampling of armies over its quaint town square, or the burning of ...  [+]

I had just gotten out of the gas station and bought what I usually bought on my little Sunday night trips—a pack of reds, a water bottle (one of the purified waters. Spring water is quite gross to ...  [+]

The DeliverBot drops the box at my feet and wheezes out a metallic "Happy Birthday" before flying away. At first, I think it's a mistake, because it isn't my birthday. At least, I don't think it is ...  [+]

My daughters run across the hard-packed sand, their blonde hair—Maureen's hair—streaming out behind them. They are three little replicas of my wife. As always, the worry grips my heart with icy ...  [+]

"Can I get you anything?" Granny Marion asked from the kitchen. "I'm afraid I don't have much here."

"I'm alright," I called back to her, tugging at the neck of my varsity jumper. I'd realised on ...  [+]

The sisters had walked these trails many times when they were little. But this time, the older sister was walking with her boyfriend. The younger sister stayed in front, pretending not to be bothered ...  [+]

It was the summer of '82, my first year at Saint Vincent's. I'd just arrived in the city, a newly minted nurse from the Midwest, and taken an apartment on Perry Street with three other nurses. He was ...  [+]

It was the splatter of liquid on my face that woke me. Shitty-quality beer, with a taste of loam. Awareness returned as it puddled beneath me, where the tree roots grew against my back. Feet on the ...  [+]

The wind was sharper this close to the water. Hands trembling, Astrid hurried to zip her jacket before the ride operator checked her seatbelt. She wished her tremors had more to do with the chill in ...  [+]

Anna knew the bridge was a mistake before she and Henry even got there. Maybe it was because he had said he thought it was strange for full grown adults to interrupt a conversation to swoon over an ...  [+]

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was stolen by a terrible necromancer. He and his rotting, clanking horde abducted her from the palace gardens and carried her away and away until ...  [+]

"So, you're happy, huh?" he says in disbelief.

He asks me this question several times during our two-hour get-together, trying to understand how I could feel so much happier about my life than he ...  [+]