Fiction

My father looked very healthy on the day of his death. There was radiance in his face, light in his eyes, his cheeks were ruddy with a good circulation of blood. It was December 6th, and there was a slanted snowstorm outdoors. When you looked through the window, you had a feeling that the whole…

When she was six she wanted to be a goldfish. She could breathe through clear water and watch the world through glass. But she didn't want to be orange, like her own fish, she wanted to be gold. That was when she lived with her father, and he bought her whatever she asked for. Usually…

Red Deer turned the ball in his hand. They were yelling in the bleachers now. "Chief! Go home, Chief!" The ball fit in his palm like a stone. He caught the stitching with his nails, then raised his eyes to the catcher. The catcher thrust two fingers at the ground. A slider. Red Deer nodded,…

We could tell it was him by the knock on the door. He would pound it shaking the whole thing, causing the dogs in the backyard to bark and snarl and leap against the picket fence-a muddy-colored gate, really. I stayed near the back of the kitchen, hands pressed on my knees, all ashy and…

She insisted on the room being as dark as possible, yet the street lights still managed to filter in. She lay with his weight upon her, watching his movements in the mirrored closet doors. In the dark she could barely be seen. Her hands and body moved like wisps of smoke. His white skin was…

Mrs. Chow heard the widow. She tried reading faster but kept stumbling over the same lines. She thought perhaps she was misreading them: "There comes, then, finally, the prospect of atomic war. If the war is ever to be carried to China, common sense tells us only atomic weapons could promise maximum loss with minimum…

From where she was sitting at the kitchen table, her hands deep in the ball of dough in a green bowl, she could see him cross the creek beyond the lower pasture and angle up toward the house. He stopped to lean on the fence that bordered the remains of the summer garden, where the…

It was Rob Baxter's guard dog again. Maddy laid her arm over her scratchy eyes and wondered who the mutt was after tonight. It felt too early for the paper boy, too late for some man strolling with his girlfriend. When the barking didn't stop, Maddy threw back covers and got out of bed. Charlie…

Cecily's parents are divorcing, and perhaps for revenge, perhaps to distract, perhaps to build self-esteem, her mother Kate has taken to frenetic self-improvement. Shopping trips, perms and cuts, nail wraps, aerobic exercises, massages. Now she is going to Calistoga to the mud baths. Cecily finds the idea of mud baths bizarre, yet, curious and amused…