Fiction

Carleyville left late because of the rain. That morning the phone had finally been disconnected, after a ridiculous argument with the phone company, when the supervisor he was finally connected with agreed to disconnect after asking a series of questions he could not possibly answer. With his credit card, his “code” was his mother’s maiden…

Lily Stark’s mother had just said the facts of the murder were too horrible to repeat. But Lily’s father insisted a story as awful as how Mr. Sam was slaughtered would teach Lily something about this world. “I don’t care about the world you even mean,” Lily said. For a long time Lily had been…

On the evening of D-day, the pub is packed. It’s a close June night in the Welsh hills, with the threat of thunder. The radios of the village cough with static. The Quarryman’s Arms, with the tallest aerial for miles around, is a scrum of bodies, all waiting to hear the Prime Minister’s broadcast. There’s…

Jane and Evan moved to a small city in eastern Ohio and rented an old house on half an acre surrounded by a stone wall. Jobs came easily to them. People could see by their open and unlined faces that something good was happening in their lives. Evan went to work for an insurance agency,…

Nicky licks my eyelids. He pins me down and licks my eyelids. You should hear what boys call me always looking for the tongue in my mouth because my lips are the only place on me with any fat like maybe once they got bit. I’m a small town so up go my fists and…

The first thing she finds is a hand. In the beginning, she thinks it’s a tangle of sheet or a wadded sock caught between the mattress cover and the mattress, a bump the size of a walnut but softer, more yielding. She feels it as she’s lying, lazing, in bed. Often, lately, her body keeps…

Thank you, beautiful,” I said as my six-year-old daughter, Maude, came skipping over from the swings to hand me a warm, wilted bouquet of dandelions. Dandelions, the only flowers no one cares if you pick. Maude smiled at me, then turned and ran screaming back to the playground. “Stop,” she called as she ran, her…

I. The City How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave. -Jeremiah, Lamentations 1:1 Manila suffered during the war. How many times have I heard this? There are…

Harris was walking his usual route to work, up Beacon Street and past the State House, when half a block ahead he saw their stolen car stopped at a red light. It was their missing car, all right-a white ’94 Honda Accord, license plate 432 dog, easy to remember-and it was still pumping out pale…