The bat was a gift from her father. It was a souvenir bat, one-of-a-kind. “This bat,” said her father, “is more than just a bat. It is a special bat, a valuable bat. It is not to be used. It is not to

She was going up to Poughkeepsie to see a girl she had met on the internet who, promisingly, shared her passion for Gary Larson comics.

She opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it, starts to laugh. ‘I guess we're both freaks.’

My six-year-old son stretches his arms to their limit as he describes his latest nightmare.

with an introduction from Matt Bell

She could eat. She could get a little plump, not so plump that he wouldn’t like it, but plumper than before she knew him, when she had to stay thin and dainty so she could get married and become plump, though no more than he liked.

If we accept the conventional ATF line, bootleggers are scoundrels of the worst sort, caring only for the almighty dollar, men who will poison you with hootch run through junk radiators and contaminated with everything from antifreeze to dead rats.

Find your mark. As American as they come. Like this couple, standing a few feet to your left. Around your age, but taller, sturdier, sun-fed and muscular. Their smiles remind you of neatly racked milk bottles.  

It was during the seventh experiment that I died, or I think I died—I mean, I must have died because if I hadn’t there surely would have been a lawsuit of some sort, and I’d know about it by now if I hadn’t died. Maybe I’d be filthy rich and wouldn’t have to keep signing up for these research studies and tests just to pay my bills. And to buy my pills.

The man who used to be my husband wanted to hook up.  “Right here,” he said after parking our Nissan Sable in the road we used to live on and killing the headlights

After last night, I’m no longer allowed at The Mint Bar. You could say it’s because I choked the owner’s daughter up against the wall next to the jukebox that only plays Cash songs—pushed her hard enough that a quarter fell from the coin slot—or you could say she deserved it.

I’m in accounting. Sally in the lab. Among her other duties, Sally is an odor judge. Her nose is rather ordinary to look at, what my grandma might have called a button nose. But Sally’s nose is legend.

Just another dead body in a city of dead bodies, right? This world is out to eat me, Chase. I feel the scratch of its teeth.

The Chetrams were from Trinidad and listened to Bollywood music on the weekends. They were good, hardworking people. Their kids were polite. They were not Muslims as far as their neighbors could tell, since Chetram liked Miller Lite and the daughter wore high-waisted shorts in the summer. It was not polite to inquire.

Joe’s uncle bought rain barrels and fertilizer. A.J.’s dad emptied the family checking account, $300 at a time, from the Circle K where he bought cartons of cigarettes, where my brother was robbed at

My child could draw that.

Adam and Deb’s kid— Jonathan— is standing center stage, looking out at the crowd and desperately trying to remember his next line. It’s probably his first play, unlike my little Lucy. She did her time

When the first billionaire exploded I was at the drive-thru with my dad.

Mom couldn’t understand why we were so interested in him, the old man who shuffled through the park, waving his metal detector over the thick summer grass, digging up hub caps and toothbrushes and

The whale, halter top and pigtails, flops back onto the couch with a script.

Leigh Chadwick goes into the bathroom, turns off all the lights and spins around three times while chanting, Leigh Chadwick, Leigh Chadwick, Leigh Chadwick

His voice, crisp like apple vodka, poured into the September air.

I looked up at Rudy, his back hitting the air like a ruler. The mind is an act of balance, he said, looking at me. It is a lever for the body.

Who could need this much flesh? Four pounds of Louisiana crawfish, one pound of Alaskan king crab legs, six pounds swordfish steaks, a pound of oysters, three pounds lobster tails, five ribeye steaks, three New York strips, six T-bones, four packs of stew beef, two family packs of chicken drumsticks, and enough shrimp to fill five plastic shopping bags.

In Geometry class, Vicky said that a man had broken into her bedroom in the night and that she’d talked to him until he left.