Fiction

You make a dime-size incision within the umbilicus. At the base, hidden. Then a quick push with a needle—pop! fascia; pop! peritoneum—and you’re in. Turn on the gas, you say to the nurse, and the belly balloons with carbon dioxide. Tense and tympanitic, it is a flesh-colored drum. Music, please. Glistening intestines, pulsatile aorta, and…

We moved into our new offices on a Thursday, and they burned down completely around 3:00 p.m., so we were out of the new offices and back into the old offices by Friday afternoonish. Armstrong was the one who started the fire, I think. I saw him messing around with the shredder after I got…

I’ve already decided to call my father about the deluge in my bathroom, even as I pace around and pretend I can fix it alone. The toilet tank is overflowing, so I take its lid off and slide my arm right in, jab at the plastic and rubber pieces, which does nothing. I live in…

In the days before she died, Doug’s wife had given him detailed instructions about how he should comport himself in his future romantic endeavors. (“Ellie,” he said, “I do not want to talk about this.”) First, he was not to introduce their adult children to any women for at least a year. (“Ellie, please—”) Second,…

I used to want to help him. Nurture him, provide the attention he craves. But trust me on this: do not engage with Johnny. If you meet him by the bathroom and he tells you his theory about the id and the color red, do not stop to converse. If he peeks his nose into…

Joseph cursed his face in the cab’s rearview mirror. A mix of old and new betrayed the convergence of time. Grayed goatee and riverbeds of crow’s feet; salt and peppered hair. When he smiled big, dimples sank into his laugh lines. A hint of boyhood lit Joseph’s eyes. He had little else to show for…

“Jimmyjimmyjimmyjimmyjimmy,” he said to his new friend as he lay on the bed in detox. It was early afternoon, and he was still dressed. There was mud on the front of his shirt and on his jeans, and his boots were muddy too. He’d had his wife stop along the country road on the way…

The gun goes off. The gun just goes off, is the way it seems. I’m aiming at the sky and the barrel flashes. The clip holds nine rounds. Nine flashes. And the sound! Oh, the sound of a .45 pistol firing off into the solitary deep of a 3:00 a.m. night out in the country….

I gave the girl my wife’s nightgowns. Her sexiest lingerie. Back when my wife still used to wear those things for me. Back before I started drinking sixty beers a day. 24/7 drinking. I don’t know if the girl wears them. Maybe she wears them for someone else now. That would be some weird shit,…