Fiction

If Trudy had scooped the keys from Karl’s hand, if she had trilled, “How about I drive this time,” or if she had snapped, “You’ve got no business behind the wheel, you should know that by now,” they would have been stopped at that light, Trudy fiddling with the vents as the mist crept up…

When 600 milligrams of mifepristone is introduced into the bloodstream, it binds to progesterone receptors without activating the receptors, acting as an antiprogestin. Progesterone is fundamentally important for sustaining an early pregnancy. Try again—in English. When mifepristone is introduced into the bloodstream of a pregnant woman, it cuts off the supply of progesterone to the…

Ellis Howard was sitting on the back porch, oiling the barrel of an old flintlock rifle that he had propped across his knees, when the neighbor girl appeared before him, scabby and slouching, pulling at the hem of a yellow cotton dress, and asked him if he had seen her dog that had run off…

This time the bombs came in the middle of Sunday mass. Leila heard the planes first, screaming from above. Then the first blast shook the entire church, pulled the walls and wooden pews and windows and ceramic-tiled roof off the building and turned them into a rain of fire and ash. Leila didn’t have time…

Leda would take the train. She hadn’t been on one in some time. A few days before, she read about a woman who killed herself on the track. She just lay there until it came. You never heard of that anymore—it seemed to have gone out of style. She didn’t think it was the best…

The first couple of pounds were hard and I cried a lot; I wasn’t used to so little food. I had signed up at one of those clinics, spent a lot of money on diet soup, and got weighed in front of a bunch of other fat people so when I wanted to eat a…

Ever since the California economy collapsed, people have been coming to our street at night and going through the trash. That sounds worse than it is—I guess if it’s recyclable, then it’s not really trash. They sort through the blue bins that were wheeled out to the curb during the day by the gardening crews….

The spring I turned ten my father told me we’d be spending a month in Maine with old friends. “They have a daughter who’s a little older than you, Josh. And it’s time I taught you to fish,” he said. “You remember the Izelins, don’t you?” I didn’t, not exactly. They’d stayed with us for…

“You’re going to leave your watch on?” “You’re leaving on your cross?”