Fiction

Eventually I want to be able to sit still for an entire evening breathing the air around me in and out like a sturdy houseplant with no need for cigarettes or drinks or television or touching or being touched. That's my goal in life right now, not forgetting that I have a realistic education and…

It was not the kind of service one would expect, considering the quality of the hotel. Around eight o'clock both Eunice and I were awakened by a heavy pounding on the door to our room that sounded once, loud and authoritatively, then decreased into what seemed a series of pulsing echoes. I staggered across the…

The hump on her back was bad when she crawled out of bed at dawn to make breakfast for her grand-niece. It was an ugly hump, but small, almost unnoticeable when she wore large collars sewn with lace and ribbons. Now she didn't care. She pulled her bathrobe over the aching knot of spine. Last…

I The ghost of Raymondo Cruz leaned awkwardly against a far corner of the angled bedroom; by now Victor recognized that the mere slump of shoulders, the bending of wrinkled green slacks and a downcast skinny face signified nothing tragic; odds were high that Popps was only meditating, for no tears slid around; Victor, the…

The first time Jack had to hunt a whale he went about it all wrong. He'd never thought about it much, so his confusion came as no surprise when he woke up one morning with harpoons in his lashes. After he'd picked them all out he decided to walk down to the wharves and talk…

I exhausted the local dentists. They had nothing to say. Even the specialists in the city were silent. All I wanted was an explanation. – Why are my teeth falling out? – You've been working too hard. – I'm a healthy man! – Don't argue. Cut out the night life. That's when it started, hm?…

This is a bathroom/animal/castration story. Dianne and Drummond Hadley have a wildcat that was given to them by the guy that runs the Desert Museum in Tucson. It stands maybe two feet high and is really substantial if you're used to looking at housecats. It plays. If you pull a wad of paper on a…

Before it gets lost into the void I want to tell about a letter that got written to the Denver Post years ago. It could have been as long ago as 1947 or 1948. It was apparently written in answer to a letter that had been written earlier and, judging by this letter the earlier…

He was a piece of trash from the first, not to be taken seriously. He arrived in the colony together with his wife, a heavy woman, and two daughters who were, one later learned, twins but not the identical kind. They seemed good enough girls, quiet and formless, pre-adolescent. But the parents were, each in…