Step one: Hear the fly.

When I return home, Samuelson is still in the living room with his friend Jake. I hear them talking as I enter our apartment through the back door. They don’t know I’m home yet, as I had stepped out

“Hey, are you up?”

"Bekya." This is my call. It echoes through the streets.

It started thundering a bit from a dark empty sky as he, in Chicago, began messaging her, who was maybe 3000 miles away or some shit like that.

Will’s buddy Kyle kept driving past the venue, under the interstate, down a side street where the girl knew she’d never be able to find her way back alone.

The rats have eaten the grain again, and the men need a new solution. We’ve already exhausted the usual methods of dealing with rats: traps, prayers, and cats. Our town has many cats, but they simply

I know that I am going to die.

In the mornings, we watch the wagons come in a procession, rolling down the streets in one thin line.

Vermont in the summer is a place I love.

I remember when my parents first told me.

The best plastic surgeons are cultured. They stand at the intersection of art and science and are not, generally, superficial.

We never thought the calcification was a problem.

The next time Jonathan and I had a playdate I told him what had happened. I was sitting on his bed and he was sitting at his desk when he told me a secret.

If thinking your own thoughts has never brought you love, is it so bad to let another think for you?

Tennis balls were always disgusting. That creep-crawly not-green not-quite-yellow felt that made my teeth grind and my spine twitch, always wet with dog slobber. And it never lost that toxic new car

Gail is the name of the person telling this story. She thinks of herself as Gail instead of I.

I need him to walk me back to the bus, but I still know I have everything he could need if he asks for it

I painted my lips and fingers red the first time I was unfaithful. It was in college, with a girl with sharp orange hair who had a smile that said come. I never really liked her--she was arrogant and

When Rose leaves, she hands me a lamp and says, “I’m afraid it will break in the move.” She tosses a bag of Twizzlers into her Corolla. The backseat is piled with thrift store dresses and Doc Martens.

The cage was located in the back and, technically speaking, was a separate store: enclosed by chain-link fences, it housed rows of metal shelves on which were stockpiled stacks of used books. The

1.

Maybe I’m an idiot, but those waves are
talking to me. They fall apart on the beach
then recoil, and the phytoplankton glow in
their recession. That’s where I think what
they’re saying is.

It was a Sunday morning in Delta, Mississippi when the body of the missing Negro giant washed up on the bank of the river. First news of the creature’s arrival was brought to the town by a local fisherman...

I turned over in bed and felt something weird. I put my hand behind my head and felt it was the pillow. I sat up and looked at the pillow. It was wet, pinkish-red. I said holy shit a few times, ran my

Andy Carr is stocking shelves at his local Value King supermarket when a forty-year-old woman taps him on the shoulder and starts yelling in his face. By the woman’s word the store is out of stock of