They searched for unholy things that lived amongst the trees. They were born from the very trees they’d be strung up on. A sin birthed smelling of a flower. The mob marched, holding lanterns and axes. They were not people of sin.

Between mouthfuls I inspected Nuno.  Short, solid built, thick arms and legs.  He looked to be in his late thirties but was dressed young, in bell bottom jeans and a pink and purple paisley long-sleeved shirt.  He wore his dark brown hair down to his shoulders.  I noticed his eyes darting around, circling the room like a flashlight. 

Everything changed with the arrival of Bo. He walked in high-waisted skinny jeans, his curly hair draping over his shoulder and his back. A thin line of mascara on his eyelashes, a tinge of pink-red on his lips. He was twelve years old, five feet eight inches tall and strutting around the village like a whore of Police Bazaar. You knew immediately that was something you couldn’t stomach. You knew how revolting it is for a boy to walk around like that, staring at men like that, talking to other men like that.

Something was off that morning, that pre-dawn, before I went for a walk and crossed paths with The Man Who Sneezed, but to this day I cannot pinpoint just what was off. Maybe it was the fact that I had cream in my usually black coffee that afternoon, or that my daily conversation with my mother got cut short, or maybe the fact that I was so low that night that I got high so as to forget about the low

You see me bite my lower lip. Hear the grating screech of metal on floor as I pull a chair over to sit at eye-level, the way they taught us to in medical school when ‘Delivering Bad News’. This is not the quick “The CT scan of your head looks great!” conversation you were hoping for.

The General broke out into a fit of laughter, picking up the earthen ball of clay. “Oh, la fille,” he laughed, as my family and I remained still. “You are but a commoner, so you do not know better, but this is a holistically inaccurate depiction!” He would not stop laughing. “Come here, child. You see, the Earth is flat, like this table.”

"What kind of purple?" I hadn’t a clue. She prodded me forward. "Is it blue purple or red purple?" Blue purple, I was sure. "And what color is the shadow?" Purplish grey, I guessed. Yes, she said and awarded me the praising smile I coveted.

“The marigolds are dying,” Maggie started the conversation as if they were already in the middle of a conversation. She then sucked a cigarette, her exhalation roaring into the receiver. “It’s only September.”

Branko was right, Agoston was never very prosperous. He was a blacksmith in the old country

Just before dawn. Another blue sky turned orange. I burned through a neighborhood in Agoura Hills.

With dawn the rain abated, and as the boy unzipped and peeled back the tent’s door panel to survey the campsite

To be fair, Fred does try to "improve" the bus. A few months ago, he installed a wooden stove in the middle of the aisle

Only when he passes Ms Kriti in the main corridor does Pujari Lal realize what had happened.

A bump came up through the seat, another bump. They had landed. A string of runway lights gliding past, then a row of blue and orange Lufthansa tailplanes