Before the Earth was formed, with all its size and splendor, there existed a much smaller world that God built for practice. The to-do list loomed in front of Him, every creation to come, sketched in blazing fits of ego, but He was still young then, neurotic and nervous, not yet brimming with the Old-Testament…

How can Restorall help? Restorall reduces excessive brain activity that can lead to anxiety or insomnia, increasing total sleep time. + What can be expected from Restorall after one dose? Very simply, a good night’s sleep. You wake refreshed and ready to start the day. While Restorall cannot replace the husband you resent for not…

You say this is the worst thing I could do. You almost have it together but your voice snags on the last word. I know this will make you furious with yourself. Your pride is keeping your spine straight and your voice low, but the emotion you show in that one word is unmistakable. I…

An excerpt from a novel-in-progress Our hearts are concrete, poured over the stars and left to harden in the windless void. We are ash in the throat of man, ground dust under his boot heels. Long, long ago, before we were born or made or sprung from man’s fancies and our father’s head, a single…

1. The Magician had six toes on his left foot. He had four on his right. He often thought that if he had been a better magician — one with something more than a store-bought wand — he would have been able to even things out some. But he was not that better magician. The…

Stage #1: Conquest After the death of a favorite wife, it is natural to feel disorientated and adrift, as if moving unsteadily through a thick fog. This is because your first response to bereavement was to assemble an invasion fleet bound for Japan — in itself, a usual part of learning to manage and understand…

Static danced along the barbed wire, blue grasshoppers leaping from barb to barb. The skin on my arms prickled as the sky slowly grew darker, the dust and dirt coming in quickly from the north. A rolling wave of dark grey, almost black — that Kansas dirt, worse than the Oklahoma red or Texas yellow.…

When my brother gets mad at his daughters, he takes Xanax with a bottle of wine. He thinks he blacks out because he never remembers what happens after. His daughters — identical twin girls who just turned 14 — meticulously document their lives on the Internet; I’m their Facebook friend and something like an informant.…

I let him ring the doorbell eleven times. I knew he knew I was home, and I knew he wanted my eggs. “You must have a stockpile,” he said when I opened the door. He hadn’t been by last week. With the breeze pushing past me I asked him, “What is it about chainsaws on…

Customs Naked, they lay in bed staring at the ceiling, as if it were a camera. Talking to it, laughing, high from adrenaline and sex, the smell of them. The fire alarms were quiet now, and the only sound was the hiss of the wind, the motion of a car on the street stories below.…

“In the name of God, please let me die in peace!” Those are the last words of Voltaire. Then he looked at the priest standing above his bed and died. “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” Those are the last words of Socrates. Then he drank some…

It was a murmured buzzing, a beeping, a maniacal monotone creature chirping. It was in his head. It was impossible to get out. He roiled the sheets till sleep was gone. He emptied the drawers. He unplugged the TV. He shook the alarm clock until it rattled. He muffled the clothes hangers. He stood in…