Lucky Snake My grandmother willed half of her thirty-acre farm estate to the young handyman who frequently visited her house to fiddle with the old wiring and oil the creaky doors, a leather toolbelt slung low on his hips. The document she’d printed from Wills.com stated that this was because he reminded her of my…

I saw a man get executed in the street today. Masked gunmen surrounded him before unloading a hail of bullets into his Carhartt jacket. I watched it on my phone during my lunch break in between eating a hard-boiled egg and checking my emails. Subject: Quarterly fiscal reports due this week. Respond. Delete. Subject: New…

I think I get what this person’s problem is, but could you say more? What do they want? What’s in their way? Have you considered giving them a fatal flaw? What if they’re just paranoid or too trusting or trapped in their own head?  Would anyone ever really call them that? Do people still say…

On the first day the ocean tried to take him back, Mara was the only one who noticed. Everyone else was busy being summer, slicked with sunscreen, loud with laughter, sweating into plastic cups of neon drinks. The beach was crowded with umbrellas blooming like bright fungi in the sand. Children shrieked at the hem…

The neighborhood kids get a kick out of it. They’re always trying to stump me, you know, name something I won’t mow over. But I’ll mow over just about anything. Nothing living, of course. Should go without saying. Tyrell Sleeveland — you know him, always with the runny nose, lives off Madison and Twinkle with…