Emly held her breath. She gazed at the backyard through the locked sliding glass doors. The air smelled of Watermelon Smash Buzz Balls, sleazy confectionary perfume, and B.O. Edgar’s parents were away...

The train car smells faintly of damp fabric. Ian keeps his knees pressed together, his canvas bag pulled flush against his stomach so it doesn’t brush the suit coat of the salaryman standing above him...

Earl Morgan built a life-sized toy army tank for his boys, Tommy and Scott, in the summer of seventy-one. A rope ladder on the side led up to the top hatch door, and another led down into the hull whi...

At any point during the past month have you felt pleasure in your body? Pleasure, that rambunctious barking dog weaving round your feet, leaping and toppling you, paws on your shoulders, while you sta...

He only died old. He was old and gray and tired, and we caressed his wrinkled hands before they took him away, and we stared at his lifeless body, because we knew it was the last time we’d see him, an...

My sister’s ex-boyfriend drives past our house day and night. His beat-up, ugly-as-sin Subaru Tribeca screams as he guns it up our hill. My sister decided they were over last week because of the thing...

As soon as the waiter clears our dishes, Rothko sees the empty white tablecloth as just another canvas needing to be filled. “I don’t have any paints with me,” he says as he rolls up his sleeves, “but...

Natalie sat in a corner of the café, sipping her coffee and looking out the window at the people passing by. The door opened and a man entered holding the hand of a little girl. Natalie watched him as...

The sky is yellow, the air thick with the smoke of wildfires blown in from Canada. My ten-month-old Jessa stands at the window, desperate to swim after her nap. Her pool sits on the deck, the glisteni...

I’m in love with a moon girl who smells like lunar dust, sharp and charged. Every night, she studies me, reverent as church quiet, then fucks me feral. Every morning, I wake undisturbed, to a husband ...

After tap-dance class one night, Jewell’s instructor, Lyle, leans in, whispering. “Got a minute?” She’s on a bench, unbuckling low-heeled pumps, taps on heels and toes, clinging to tap-love, a childho...

Hauntings AI actress Tilly Norwood has AI dogs all over her AI mansion which has just been listed on AI Zillow. Every room is a dog park. Every pillow is a play toy. Every column is a tree. If you buy...

Anthony walks into Camille’s apartment with a bottle of Smirnoff, wearing a black tux. She has hers on too. They’re dressing as twins though they’re actually cousins. Sonny Berkowitz finally gave Cami...

Low scrim of sky. Small puddles, reflecting grey buildings, sky. An old woman walks down the street carrying her groceries. She thinks of herself in the past. Years quicken. Years pass. Years dissolve...

He leaves the dorm, a beer in each hand, heads down the hill, and now his hands are empty. He’s in line at Moogie’s, a grungy bar where mostly college guys in frayed jeans, and untied shoes hang out. ...

I’m coming down the pike. It’s a different kind of vibe. Now I’m a 3-D monosyllabic image of myself.  I’m almost holographic. I mean, do animals really believe in God? Anyway, my guess is it’s probabl...

It wasn’t a bad baby, she just liked to make it cry. They called the baby Star Shine because that was its name and Lesly thought that was a joke—her older brother not known for his humor but for his s...

“I bet you’re a scaredy cat and wouldn’t dare go inside the house,” Rumy says, her noodle arms crossed. Kai whizzes on his new bike around us. Never set foot in the corner lot house, my Maman said eve...

When he showed up at my front door, it was hard to take him seriously. He was an older man, on the far side of sixty. He told me he had a claim on my house, despite possessing no paperwork, no proof. ...

I first fell in love with fire when I watched the body of my father burn in the pyre, his flesh transmuting into a fine powder that danced circles in the breeze like a soul set free, so I swallowed my...

He spoke an ancient language out of Siberia. Full of wide low skies and rolling grasslands, shawled men with staffs, and ponies grazing over distances. This is one of those stories where people magica...

Nearing the border, Celal peeks out of the hole. He’s sitting fetus-like in the back of the truck. A swirl of cool air seeps in and dissipates the steam creeping on his glasses like ivy. He can hear a...

He wasn’t really our Dad, I called him Larry because his van smelled like Limberger cheese. And he wore brown slacks to match his wheels, the fabric sagged, and his velour shirts always reeked of reef...

Dahlia peers out to the horizon where a tiny sailboat hovers. Her throat tightens when she imagines it speeding away and disappearing from sight, wishes she could pluck it from the sea, cradle it in h...

How do I assess if someone is lying What are somatic “cues” Most unobtrusive GPS tracking devices How do I install a GPS tracking device Can a phone detect a hidden tracker How much does average divor...

While I took down the strings of green and red lights I’d looped around our young maple tree before Christmas, my wife Christine followed the boy who lived next door up and down the sidewalk as he rod...

your carapace is an inky blue, mine an olive green.  We float the Gulf of Mexico for years, hunt tiny mussels, detritus, and oysters until one day a Great Blue Heron lifts you away. We’re carnival wor...

I’ve tried for years to forget them, tried not to imagine how it was to step away from those fingers of fire into the cool air of a September morning. I used to dream I was one of them, on a window le...

One guy from summer school only wanted head. Told me I was pretty but he wasn’t really into me. Had plans to date this other girl. Smaller. Petite. Not me. In that moment, I had to choose between doin...

Gran’s stories were full of local creatures, the banshee, the kelpie, the pooka. But my brothers said I was the real creature. They had me convinced I was a changeling. Told me the good people had tak...

when memory leaves my body i will be free to live on a planet where everything is white: the sun, the sky, the ocean. i will lie to rest in a field with moist green grass, soft brown soil, and gentle,...

All the appliances stopped at once that Thursday afternoon. It was a mass rebellion. Peggy was unprepared, despite a similar experience with her underwear. Her Hanes cotton briefs in Easter-egg pastel...

It’ll get easier, Mother would say. Just keep your head down. Frances obeyed even when handed over to the first suitor who asked for her hand, barely thirteen, to a widower nearly as old as Father. Fr...

Janie saunters into the bar that night, minidress, wild hair, and we all stare, because absolutely none of us expected her to show her face around here ever again, not after what she did to Brad. We f...

I wore the white dress I sewed myself—I hemmed it neat and everything—on the day the marionberry sky cracked open like a cadaver’s chest. At recess. In the middle of me twirling and turning. Shimmying...

When our toddler shot the mailman, that was my bad. I’d forgotten to put my Glock in the gun safe, due to having been drinking, and I left it out on the coffee table despite the fact that I know Baby ...

Grandma had always been the family historian. She held onto all our memories. If somebody couldn’t remember a name, an occasion, an anecdote, she’d have the answer. She even held a web of histories th...

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.″ —Carl Sagan He thought it to be a romantic gesture—emerging from the Florida Everglades to plod to Bucky Banks’ Swamp Shop to buy the ring, a sma...

Mothers at the fair feel their muscles tense, feel steel form in their bellies, pull their children close, fight or flight, when the Scrap BoyMen walk by. The mothers’ eyes follow the erratic steps of...

January 11, 1951 You. You reside in the high desert sixty-five miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada, far from the casinos and show girls. You are legend. Indigenous peoples adorn rocks with your image. Fo...

Her family was trying out the new Italian restaurant in town, and while her dad signed the check, the waiter slipped her a note with his number on it. She had been watching him. Like she watched the h...

We all smelled like sulfur that summer. Brunswick was a pulp mill town on the coast of Georgia, beachless but shouldered by the murk of blackwater swamps that teemed with alligators and the occasional...

Memories stack like a cord of crooked wood, shifty and full of spiders. There was shouting and slamming of doors, which your older brother Jay turned into games of hide and seek, tucking you into smal...

The best thing about Joy was her grief. Two children dead in the same car accident. A corvette, a tree. Bobby and Jules. Bobby at 22, Jules at 18. I wasn’t alive then. I didn’t know Joy in the peak of...

Ralph slept like a log, if logs sleep. Mostly they just lay there, blank and dumb, waiting to be chopped. Not so far from Ralph, Jessie thought, only logs didn’t snore. Ralph buzz-sawed on, lips flop-...