Section
Showing 73-96 of 310 pieces
Fiction
He didn’t want to put out an ad. Online or newspaper, anywhere. The moment you do that, the phone will begin to ring constantly, he said. All kinds of people calling. Brokers! Who wants to deal with the brokers! He hoped to get someone through word of mouth. There were…
Fiction
Her deliberate pulling back of her spinning out-of-control thoughts, by latitudes and then by degrees, that bump into her present-day life. Of her stacking and re-stacking of newspapers by date. Of her pushing their edges into alignment. Perhaps, in a bid to guarantee to her life a shape of order…
Fiction
“Pocket full of posies!” She watched as a little girl appeared two houses down, dancing down the sidewalk. She was holding a doll in one hand, waving it wildly over her head as she sang. When she reached the old woman’s house, the child spun around and threw the doll into the air.
Fiction
His aunt stayed angry until another American came to visit, a tall lady with yellow hair and lime green glasses. She took Sami back to the ruined home, snapped pictures of him in front of it. The tall lady paid his aunt a lot of money, enough to move to the mountain camp, where everything was better.
Fiction
The dilemma in her dream woke her. She looked over and saw her husband, asleep. Her muscles ached from being unsettled. She looked around and saw a chasm of shifting shadows. Her chest felt tight, making it hard for her to catch a breath.
Fiction
The old man looked out his window – the elderly are just like cats in many ways: from the number of hours they sleep per day, to the habit of peering out of the window at any chance they get (that is, basically every minute).
Fiction
Good, you say; I’m relieved. You hail the waiter and order two more appetizers. You laugh. You have to keep up your strength you say. When the food comes, we both eat ravenously. I’m getting tired of talking. Let’s take a break, I say; why don’t you talk for a while?
Fiction
“Hell,” he said, “It was just like a movie, Tish. Janie didn’t have a clue. I drove her out there, blind-fold and all. I brought her down to the dock. Took her blindfold off. She was blown away. Couldn’t believe it. She said, ‘Where are we?’
Fiction
Gabby had been in this situation before. People hated to think someone had broken the law of averages. Everyone, she included, knew her luck would run out sooner or later. She’d had dates before where this had been a deal breaker.
Fiction
Ace was a wide man. Over the years, he’d developed layers of fat over his muscle, earned from years of good eating and unseen manual labor on the mountain. His black beard was painted with shades of dusty grey. His face was wrinkled from smiling and squinting in the sun.
Fiction
“…We don’t expect you to defend your piece – and I honestly don’t think it can be defended – but we would like to hear your thoughts as to what you’ve been told…”
Fiction
Radney stood there like a lump of flesh, in boxers that had parrots printed all over them. He was completely bald on top but had fashioned his monk’s fringe into a tiny ponytail.
Fiction
You stared at the textbook on your kitchen table. Your desk was next to your bed and you had to be as far away from your bed as possible.
Fiction
I am the Alpha and Omega, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. I am Elohim and Shàngdi, Hu and Zhŭ, Kartār and Khuda. Say my name.
Fiction
What about unconditional faith? Isn’t it golden? Thoughts ricochet inside Hasan’s mind as he recollects the moments when he felt heavy in his heart because of believing in Allah. The moments of humiliation, confusion, anger, of being called backward, an antique, an old-fashioned fool by people half his age.
Fiction
Words and water are life-giving: strictly essential. Like Noah’s flooded earth, words inundate, superfluously powerful. “The waters of the flood were upon the face of the earth…all the fountains of the great deep [were] broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.”
Fiction
You find a spot a few feet away from the pool. As you stomp on the shovel you are surprised at how sad you feel, but a momentary lapse causes you to consider rushing the burial so you can get back to the pool and go home, which only replaces the original sadness with an agonizing guilt.
Fiction
I look outside from my tall window in the living room. Our living room is small, and the big window helps because it gives you a sense of spaciousness. I see fields that are green and yellow and trees far away. Their leaves have started to fall because it’s autumn.
Fiction
She didn’t like how he kept calling her Myna. She had told him as much, but he persisted. It made her feel small and invalidated, like a gregarious little bird of her namesake, which always needed protection. She had resisted calling herself Myna, it seemed to lend her insignificance.
Fiction
We do not know what subject Naveed Bhai studied in university, but when he got out, he asked his father to wire him a small amount of money, which he invested in a shop in a strip mall in Alief. Actually, a friend of his father suggested the business to him, accompanied him to the site and negotiated the purchase of the shop.
Fiction
Anne is not efficient. The date of the closing is set, and she needs to be out. It is as cruel and simple as that.
Fiction
I frown, miraculously suppressing an impulse to laugh. Is my father going crazy? How come I haven’t noticed a sign although we are living, separately, under the same roof?
Fiction
Animals in the area had begun to grow hands, opposable thumbs in fact, while the rest of their bodies remained the same. They’d heard bobcats and coyotes howling off in the distance, maybe on the now mostly abandoned golf course.
Fiction
Then it struck her. “Why, I’ve taken the Lord into my heart. That’s it. I should have realized.”