Sam and Katie dash into the surf. They are four and six and so full of life it breaks Anna’s heart. She’s walking twenty yards behind them. Her husband, Jim, trudges along beside her. “Don’t go out too far,” Anna… Continue Reading
Tater Jones was an avid angler with a reliable propensity for never catching fish. He did a lot of angling, but ended most days out of bait and no fish. He got his nickname, Tater, from Ben Joe Crewes, the… Continue Reading
Petey had been pitching the baseball against the house for the last hour. He kept an eye on the street, watching for his father’s car. It would be too early for him to be getting home, but his father had… Continue Reading
In a virtual space designed to feel like a pickup bar, but I wish we’d seen each other across the ravaged land of the apocalypse. Rubble of the old life slowly decaying under warm light of the indifferent morning sun,… Continue Reading
If Richard was going to commit suicide—and this time, he really was—he wasn’t about to make some elaborate production of it. He refused to leave behind a situation which needed cleaning up. That meant not hanging himself, not slitting his… Continue Reading
When I was nine, my dad warned me about the dangers of dreaming. “You know, it’s like if you drink too much water, it shuts down the electrical connections and you just keel on over,” he’d said in his woodchip… Continue Reading
In New Zealand, there’s a candy assortment of gangs. Most often, they ride on motorcycles, deal in narcotics, prostitution, illegal guns and fear. Recruitment’s booming as New Zealand’s underpaid police scarper to Australia, and dysfunctional kids clamber up the criminal… Continue Reading
After our boss quit the senior executives replaced him with a coffee machine. They said that the consultant had delivered his report and that the replacement was appropriate and cost effective. Each morning we gathered around the shiny appliance and… Continue Reading
Jacob, a TV journalist for a regional station, was setting up the shot with Tommy, his cameraman, when Eris first approached him. “I saw what happened,” she said. “You saw the trampoline take off?” Jacob asked, giving her a quick… Continue Reading
We had chosen our baseball teams in the alley behind our houses like always and started to walk down the block to the special lot, the one we still called our prairie; the only open space left in our neighborhood… Continue Reading