Fiction

Me and my neighbor Frank Main used to get along real good till the dog thing. We got two kids each, only a year apart in school, and his wife and my wife take turns sometimes driving carpool. I took his mail in every day for two weeks while they had their vacation, and once…

She hears the bear outside her dream-the charred corpse driving her away from a flaming city-before she wakes up. She has never seen a bear, except in a zoo, but she does not extricate her body from the boiling quilt or crawl to the window. Midnight in this national forest feels dangerous to her, too…

We were stopped at a red light on Pac-Highway just past Sports World and this car full of girls pulls up on our left side. This was late on a Saturday night. It was me and Dave and Mike, and Mike says we should race them. So when the light turns I gun it and…

From Book of the Cranberry Islands, Chapter 14, The Burial of The Jellyfish; Return of Champlain to the Outer Waters, Section 1 The moon cracks the glass, rising in pure altimeter like a ghost. A ghost rises, its phosphor is the moon. In the center of myself: a stream, travelling neither toward nor away from…

Everything happens to everyone before it's all over, Harry says to Mary. Everything. . .To some people it happens early in life. To others late. But it all happens. He is smoking on his back in bed. I would marry you, Mary, if I could. But I can't. I know, she says. It's the end….

Just north of Truth or Consequences, he heard the unmistakable bang of metal punching through metal deep inside the engine. Lights came on all over the dash and then they were coasting along dead with Landis pumping at the brake pedal, which had lost its power-assist, and aiming them over onto the shoulder. “What did…

The wind blew with such direct force that the porch swing rode up sideways and wrenched back, overshooting its normal setting several times a minute, and my great-aunt Stacy was worried. She waited for a pause and then rushed to unhook it. The swing fell, and the chain smacked her ankle in its horrible funny-bone…

Today: This man is serious. He has put a map of the Mall in my hands and is now insisting that after meeting with the media at the Washington Monument, the parade/demonstration must be routed to the White House for a final statement. “You’re crazy,” I shout above the other voices, a strategy I learned…

Rain slipped unharmed across the last finger of the Florida fire. She waited a moment, face flushed with heat, sweat streaking across her charcoal face, eye whites bright with adrenaline as she made sure that Wylie and I had escaped the tinderbox pine forest. Wylie’s thick braid hung heavy halfway down his back. He faced…