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…

Zeus was three years younger than Mother. Zeus could touch the basketball net without jumping.

For weeks, you’d been slipping. Collecting speeding tickets, lottery tickets, yelling at the neighbor’s boy, overfeeding the fish.

Chen Shu Ang often said that in her next life she wanted three things—to be reborn tall, to be a man (so no one could tell her what to do!) and to never leave her homeland. It went unsaid that she would once again be born in her beloved Taiwan.

Only this writer sees what’s happening in Ginny and David’s backyard. They are back there burying Tim’s dog. They’re sliding its tiny carcass into an almost equally tiny hole without any difficulty. Tim doesn’t even know his dog’s dead.

A smooth harmony floated throughout the living room. The woman’s soft tune was periodically accompanied by the lilt of her daughter’s voice and the hum of the music as they took their respective places on the couch and the clean hardwood floor. Surrounded by the comfort of their living room, the pair continued their duet…

It offers the sky smoke, dark and thick and ruthless. All Camelia Byrd can think about as the sound of the sirens roll past — shrill, strange, sharp choirs-voice fading away — is how beautiful it is. Not that she and her daughter almost died. Not that she can still see the collision every time…

Penises grew in our garden. At first we weren’t sure that’s what they were. When they were small, they could have been little developing cucumbers or zucchini or beans or (of course) eggplants. But as they grew larger it became unquestionable: these were sure-as-shit penises. And human ones, at that.

I was scrubbing dinner plates in a soapy sink bath while Juniper drowned cookies in a mug of milk at the table — both of us admiring our new and dreamy backyard garden at sunset — when the old man traipsed into view. I thought maybe he was drunk. He looked harmless and ancient —…