Fiction

In the fourth week of drought, at the third and final performance of the Roundabout Traveling Circus, the elephant keeled over dead. Instead of stepping on the tasseled stool, she gave a thick, descending trumpet, lowered one knee, and fell sideways. The girl in the white spangled leotard screamed and backed away. The trainer dropped…

It was almost midnight when my girlfriend got a call about her sister who had been arrested for taking a kebab skewer at a cookout and stabbing her husband so close to his dick that it was probably going to affect its long-term functioning. Though I did not like the guy at all, the prognosis…

Hello! I am 5 feet 11 inches and have a medium build. I have dark brown hair and blue eyes. My skin color is pale. My mother’s ethnic origin is Belgian, my father’s ethnic origin is Polish and French. My racial color code as established by the Chicago Bank of Life is white. I am…

Afterward, Eva turns her face to the wall and falls asleep immediately, smacking her lips like a newborn. Her husband and I are left alone, wide awake and clueless about what to do with our naked bodies. He fondles his half-limp dick underneath the blanket. His arm is thrusting mechanically, without much enthusiasm or hope….

To be a good computer scientist, a man needs first to understand the basics. Back away from the computer itself and into the concepts. After all, a computer is just a general-purpose machine; its purpose is to perform algorithms. It is due to the fact that algorithms are unambiguous that they are effective and executable….

The dissector instructed us to identify the tympanic membrane, a thin connective tissue that carried vibrations into the inner ear. Daniel and his partner Julie were on the cadaver’s left, and I was on the right. “Did you find it?” I asked them. I was lost, as usual, and disgusted. Each day after anatomy class,…

Translated from the Icelandic by the author during a multinational, musical theater performance about a sea journey, a plainly dressed woman in her sixties gets up from her seat in the center of the third row, and holding her purse tight in her hands she starts making her way to the steps to her right….

They met at a dinner party. She was young and blond. He, tall, dark, and dead. Seated beside him, she found it hard to stop watching his pale, veined fingers stroke the fabric of his placemat. She only knew her aunt here whereas he seemed a friend to most. Across the table, a mousy guy…

I met my wife in Palau. Here’s how you find Palau on a map: Look for San Juan, then look for the farthest point from it. It was a dive trip my father had promised when I started college. By the time I had my BA, we hadn’t spoken for nearly ten months. Still, I…