This was a burlesque theater, a two-bit operation that could barely pay off the racketeers and the cops  a place to come into... more

When the governor’s budget cuts hit Eisenhower Middle School, the library’s one of the first targets... more

A new email dings into his box and Miller cringes. Somehow he knows it’s from her, something about the ding – it is insistent,... more

The next morning the phone rings early, five-thirty, definitely not later than six. The birds outside don’t scream... more

There’s been a lot of talk about Executives in the news lately, a lot of mystery and confusion. For the last... more

LAKE ELSINORE WILL HOST THE ONE TRICK PONY This place was one of those places.... more

As a teenager, I had this superficial interest in handguns—I liked how the metal felt against my skin. I had never learned to shoot one, however, nor did I really intend to know at that young age.

The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the... more

Walter White is looking in the mirror when he hears a key in the door of his condo. He is smoothing a deep maroon shirt,... more

Everyone watched him walk to the guy. Everyone saw. They were all watching with their big stupid eyes that wouldn't... more

Jose Canseco was listening to a county music song on his portable cassette player. It was ninety-seven degrees on the public golf course.... more

How're you gonna live, she said, if you don't immerse?

Inside, in the unforeseen, where the sounds of dust susurrus, we glimpse rainbowed light above the shadows. Will we ever reach there, we ask?

Wonders I. Wonders we.

Excerpt from Centers for Disease Control: Obesity in Central Florida, February 2019. Wes Urban, 32 years of age, 298 lbs. We... more

You stare down at the departed. The fulgurites of your heart chattering. She was, man, an episode. An emitter of staggering forked words...

  My boyfriend hit me in the face with a book. It was an... more

Slowly he became aware he was no longer traveling down his back-entrance staircase.

Whatever crop and bung was leftover he burned in a large heap of muzzy smoke and lapping flame and when it was chopped down to ash and live glowing charcoal ember, he drug the spreader over the field, everything still burning and here and there little volcano puffs of flame and the iron wheels sizzling themselves...

Maria say she gon' tell me the future. She say she know. Mama taught her, but Maria had that gift, not her mama. The real kind. She'd seen all kinds of things 'fore they happen, like her brother shot dead in that parking lot, she'd seen it all four days before it happened.

What you gon' tell me I don't already know? I say.

“We’re playing Memory Palace. It’s a medieval memory technique. If you need to remember a list of things, you pick a place that you remember well, like your childhood home or your office or your apartment, and you make a narrative...

If it hadn’t been for my day job, I never would have gone to Steve’s Shoes. I was a personal assistant to a famous... more

There were wolves near there. Wolves killing sheep. Poetry is dead. He thought. He could lend a hand.

Kathryn was doing all she could to get her son to touch his food again. She wanted him to eat. “I don’t know what to do,”... more

A hand over your mouth. A hush in the darkness. It’s the girl, whose name reminds you of another, who you remember marrying in some uncertain future or almost-forgotten dream.

The man woke up and walked to the bathroom. He relieved his bladder and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked at the clock. 6:25. He... more