Maisie lingered in the office supplies section before ending in home goods. She enjoyed this aisle most because she could tell that the man at the counter took pride in it. Often, it was stocked with new, unique things. This time, he had added a box of pens, with dark

Three weeks later, Alex was still there and not showing any signs of moving out. She had quit her job and was supposedly looking for another one. Occasionally, she helped out at a friend’s nursery but the friend couldn’t afford to hire her full or even parttime.  Lauren was looking

My daughter starts college in the fall and only speaks to me when she’s in need of money. My wife nags me all the time about a cottage we saw upstate about three years ago. It’s in the mountains. The back deck overlooks a huge lake. A slow-moving stream runs

Three years earlier Lizbeth had moved from her small town in upstate New York to a suburb of New York City.  It had been a question of economics, safety and comfort – a dark studio apartment in a questionable part of Manhattan, but with reasonable access to job and city life

She drummed the fingers of her left hand on the rows of color-coded tabs in the drawer, pretending to deliberate, the brilliant stone twinkling with each gyration under icy fluorescent office light.  “Thanks,” Malik mumbled when she handed the folder over, quickly wheeling himself away.  Dom coughed and turned, seemingly

She was the diamond brooch of the family, who had roasted chickens, hams and turkeys, stirred gallons of iced tea, and served pound cake on Franciscan Apple earthenware. No calorie need ever be counted, nor any puff from a Virginia Slim. She bestowed comfort from hands fragrant with Porcelana. Cold

A slim mirrorless camera sits in the center of a display case among camera lenses and larger DSLR cameras. Technology has vastly improved since this camera came out. Working photographers would replace it with something with more megapixels and a better lens. They’d write off the donation on their taxes.

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.”