Fiction

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania is the softest state in the Union. Early in its history, when it was still a colony, Pennsylvania passed an ordinance outlawing sharp corners for the good of the citizenry. As a result, the artisans of Pennsylvania pioneered a style of furniture making that came to be known as Rustic Curvature for its…

No one knows where it came from. Some say a long black car pulled up to the gas station and from it stepped a black-haired, black-eyed man in a black suit, who coughed once into his fist and then gripped the pump and muddied it with his phlegm. Others say that late one night—for a…

When I met her, I had the kind of job people always think they want until they try it for a few weeks. I was working as a production supervisor for a studio that made a lot of profitable, mediocre movies, and one of my responsibilities was to find locations where other movie people would…

On the radio, they were calling it “snow-mageddon.” Joan had seen it on the news, as well, in a Doppler radar swirl that looked like a green hurricane, pulsing like a sick heart over the Cascade Mountains. The worst of it was supposed to hit tomorrow, midday, but already the snow had begun to fall…

Because nights on the third shift seem to stretch longer than they should, and because sleeping through the day has been giving him nightmares, Jimmy Barnes buys coffee at the truck stop on Sugar Hill Road. He circles the place once before parking. In the big lot out back, the tractor-trailers are lined in rows,…

We constructed a sign and planted it in the park in the center of town. Future Site of the First National Bank of the Grand Duchy of New Brunswick. As best as anyone could remember, Stephen came up with the idea itself. Lisa added “New Brunswick.” Donna contributed “Grand Duchy.” She’d read it in the…

           for Richard Bausch   There was some sort of commotion at the end of the checkout line. Words had been exchanged, and now two men, one tall and wide-shouldered, the other squat and beefy, were squaring off against each other and raising their voices. Their shoes squeaked on the linoleum. The short one, who…

1. There was an old man in Germany who thought he was a Nazi. He turned himself in to a small court in a town near Nuremburg, and said, “Restart the trials, I should be punished for what I have done.” He was the right age, and his name was a fairly common German name—…

Looking Sometimes we still see it. Even now. Nights like this, sprawled on the deck of the mothership—stars rioting overhead, waves spanking the hull below—we close our eyes and there it looms, our Infinity, floating serenely across the insides of our lids like some pale winged creature borne of desire, luck, and dreams. Also a…