Fiction

At Tin Mill Canal the left headlight burned out. Darker now: eight eyes blinking at the nailing darkness. The sewage treatment plant and its sooty gray sewage-treated smoke rising openly into pinkblack air went grayer. Near the end now nothing to worry about-did you do that, Rootie?-you saboteur you sly bastard you it’ll take more…

Tires crunch against the crushed stone driveway, and a flash of headlights crosses Kent’s bedroom window, waking him from a light sleep. But he wasn’t asleep, he tells himself. Merely resting, eyes closed. Listening. Just as, when Rose was still in high school, he lay in bed after midnight and listened for the sound of…

Mr. Tao had outlived his wife but that didn’t bother him, he always said. In time he would catch up to her in heaven. Each day he waited calmly in his chair. The winter light moved square by square across the tile floor. On Friday afternoons when I came by he looked at me through…

Last week we had a riot. Pomo, my boyfriend, tried to kill himself with a pencil. Everybody freaked. Then eight pigs rushed in and beat the crap out of us. I got put into The Coat. I hate being put into that thing. You can’t breathe. It smells like piss and shit. Though I couldn’t…

Go ahead. Open it. I think you’ll like it. I made that wrapping paper myself. It’s similar to rubber, but not exactly. You kind of have to peel it off. Do you like the avocado color? I bet you’ve never seen wrapping paper that thick, huh? Oh, I forgot to tell you-if you touch it…

Hello, readereaper. It’s certainly been a while. May I take your coat? It is four a.m. and my parents and sister are gone to North Carolina for two weeks’ vacation, which means I have the house to myself. So: I come out of the bathroom and the cat is sitting on top of the humidifier…

He brought vanilla candles. Some gift. My mother squeezed them into old silver on the mantle and lit each one. They scorched the wall. Even our best sofas couldn’t make up for the cheesy, rundown way the wall looked now. Still, this was London, not New York, and my mother didn’t even seem to notice….

To an outsider, the grieving at the Burns Bungalows looked like revels. Mrs. Oates, the registered guest, counted five men climbing the hill to the main office with six-packs of beer in each hand. Women came, too, bearing plates covered with dishtowels, babies, or crock pots in their arms, or long bottles wrapped in paper…