I like to work when it’s dark. When the morning rush starts, half my day is over. From the ovens I glimpse customers’ tired bored faces as they wait in line to start their day. At least I don’t have to deal with them. Too many customers have unrealistic expectations. My muffin isn’t golden enough,…

On behalf of women, don’t share the story your friend just emailed you about her fight with her husband. There is nothing to gain by it; any half-intelligent person would realize that any discussion of this matter with another husband, yours, is going to fall into gender divisions. Men stick up for each other. Besides,…

He opened his hand to reveal the peach pit he’d found under her pillow that morning. It rested dry and dull against his wedding ring. His other hand dropped from a pat on Lalo’s shoulder to a suggestive caress of her hip through her nightdress. She felt her skin retract against the bone but didn’t…

There were six of them — none taller than five feet or shorter than three feet. They were a pack of black eyes and bloody lips and spiky hair. Every time Walcott drove by them he looked the other way — he never wanted any trouble. He just wanted to go home, eat dinner, and…

It was cold outside, intolerable, so after dinner we resigned ourselves to looking through old photographs and drinking hot cider. The dinner itself had been lovely — roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing. After eating, we could hardly move. “I’m so full,” we complained. “My stomach is going to pop,” we whined. We loaded the fireplace…

We take the I-88 offramp after a charred billboard that reads BITO and follow what signs haven’t been faded by the years and the weather. Aude, my girlfriend, wants answers, definitive answers, and for those we will visit the Oracle. We’ve been fighting about this for days, and here we are. It’s not worth fighting…

The first to die was Mrs. Jane Hanscombe, a former teacher at Shaker Lane Elementary in Littleton (2nd grade) and the longtime widow of John “Jack” Hanscombe (rest his soul) … Mrs. Hanscombe, who had at the moment of death reached out for and grasped with her time-gnarled hand a box of noodle soup. And…

At three in the morning my ex-boyfriend started to beat on my front door. It had been three years since I’d seen him, and I had stopped sleeping with a baseball bat next to my bed. I lay listening to his fists slam into the door as he shouted, “I forgive you! Open the door!…

He wasn’t sure what caught his eye, but something made Ira look again at the label on his newest flannel pants. Technically they were pajamas — men’s sport sleep pants, according to the tag — but as he was never warm enough and as the pants were so comfortable, he’d returned to the department store…

The Fence Maker began to punch up the tall fences before 1980, we are plenty sure. The fences stood twelve feet tall. The height was as regular as a regulation. At the end of a sunlight day, the wood cast such long shadows that the roads turned dark long before dusk. The first house with…

Translated by Vuslat D. Katsanis She remembered nothing, no; not a single thing. I could see it when she spoke. Her eyes were not cloudy, her hands were not trembling. She could find the right words easily. She was wearing her long gown, and had drawn a knit sweater over her shoulders; the red of…

The family’s stomachs have been rumbling for hours. They stop at one elaborate, well-preserved, ivy-festooned Victorian house after another requesting to be let in, but the chefs only shake their heads as they fasten the place down, muttering about the storm. Outside the locked French doors, with their hands and faces spread and smeared over…