Tag: short story

He takes her hand, careful to keep his eyes away from her dominant breasts, her full pouty lips, and they begin in the living room.

First, it was his hands. Three days after he announced that he was going to leave me, I watched him drinking his coffee and noticed how his three middle fingers were slipped through the handle, gripping the body of the mug in a confident, almost loving way.

What was I going to do when I saw her? It was a question I had asked myself a thousand times. Slap her? Scream insults? Demand she give my husband back?

When did the Berlin Zoo stop displaying humans? 1931, I think, but I’m not sure.

Seven months into her husband’s depression, Diane called the church secretary. She wanted the elders to come over and anoint Mitch with oil.

This story can’t get it’s tense together or it’s person, now. Has it even got its “its” right?

But the girl is still asleep. Perhaps, thinks the prince, he kissed her too lightly. He stoops down again and kisses her a second time, this time a touch more vigorously.

They were followed by a group in tropical wear, slipping and sliding, trying to prevent their ill-fitting thong sandals from flying off. A smaller group had chosen winter wear, rolling up the block like juiced up ticks, draped in coats and jackets.

I stare at the ground imagining I am one of the condemned, what it felt like to have my fingernails torn off. I clench my fists tight and brace myself for the pain, wishing I was off this wretched island, wishing I was home.

American Nurse became our possession, the Party headquarters in Beijing told us, for only a week before Deng decided what to do with her

People who look on the bright side all the time are hypocrites at least some of the time. To say that shitty things are shitty is to speak honest truth about the world.

She tried not to look at the dead body lying only a few steps away in front of the Berkeh and under her breath prayed to the prophet Mohammad that Faraj had nothing to do with it.

Guillermo kissed her and she was not afraid of his tongue and his hands on her body, and she wanted to stay with him all night, wanted to lie down on the wet earth, but he turned around and began walking back, pulling her behind him, and soon they were out on the road and the sound of the insects grew distant, and the trees no longer protected them from the stars.

As a writer of minor stature but much endurance, I submit now my application regarding my newest project, my life work, The Life Box.

Murders weren’t uncommon in Lawrence but they weren’t an epidemic either. So they weren’t news.

Cooking was my second love, though. Arthur was third. Sword-swallowing came first.

Fardaha represents the second dekalogue of Canto X of an unfinished epic by the poet Omid Pirr.

“It will never stop, and it will always be necessary. What I did to you was necessary, and what you do to me is necessary.”

The coroner told me at the morgue that the mudslide had crushed Fulgence quickly, and the density of the dislodged soil meant that there would not have been enough oxygen for him to suffer.

What delighted me was watching how the sun changed my appearance. I spent nightly hours in the mirror, describing the new shades and hues of my face or arms to my martin, who was colorblind.

They sit down in an orderly, patient manner, packed together in the belly of the beast. The smell of varnish lingers on inside and intoxicates them all.

“Self,” she queried, “should we just kill him and be done?” She smoked, exhaling through her nose like a dragon.

“Better to believe that you come from two happy parents.”

The year we went to the Camps, my sister Leila was eighteen years old and had just begun her secret affair with Sammy.

As soon as the maid was out of earshot, his uncle said: “I’ve paid a lot to get you a visa for Panama and Guatemala. At another time, this would be called a bribe. It may take a month, maybe more, to get them.”

They fix passage across the channel for three hundred shillings; Meroe haggles. The motorboats have long since skimmed into the dusk, the passengers smiling and laughing at the platitudes of the Lamuans.

Like every soldier he had deployed with, he would probably buy himself a new car, but for now, he bought his friends drinks and dinners and gifts as if it was Christmas and he was some lean and tan Santa Claus.

Did you know that more people jack off than pick their nose while driving?

Rosa is tired of talk, tired of being tired. Armed guards stand outside to keep intruders out, or las muchachas in.

Finally, he learned her name: Nan.

A special issue: flash fiction from four favorite writers.

A special issue: flash fiction from four favorite writers.

A special issue: flash fiction from four favorite writers.

A special issue: flash fiction from four favorite writers.

The girl is from the state where people use their hands to show where they live.

The novelist on Goon Squad, the drug-taking intensity of high school kids, and the Gothic novel.

This is what happens when patients lose their patience.