Ebilene checked her e-mail for the third time that morning, but she had still received no response from the Crown Prince of Nigeria. Sure, the birds were singing their songs out to the sky — a pleasure that at her age eclipsed most others. Sure, the sun busily banished gray clouds from the sky. Sure,…

The sun went down and all the switchblades came out. A knife fight on every street corner. A hold up at every store unwise enough to stay open after dusk. Jones had knifed since he was a child. Still, he and Kegger weren’t as brutal as many knifers. They didn’t enjoy mutilation as much. They…

Mada hated bright lights, gaffers, video cameras on wheels, teleprompters, live studio audiences, and she only realized it right now, because she’d never been subjected to them before right now. Her heartbeat pummeled. Fifteen feet away the talk show host had her nose powdered and a lavalier mic clipped to the inside of her suit…

10. People don’t realize Mary Shelley’s monster isn’t ever actually referred to as Frankenstein in the story. The monster’s inventor, Victor Frankenstein, provides readers loads of great names with potential for traction, like Vile Insect, Daemon, Wretched Devil, and my personal favorite, Fiend. But still everyone calls him Frankenstein. I think that’s kind of messed…

I can never get lost. One thing I like about living in Kenmore Square next to Fenway Park right below the CITGO sign — you can see it from anywhere in the city. Beneath that glowing sign I first met my wife Tara, one of these hefty, big boned treasures, a six-footer with shiksa freckles.…

Merrill thinks about milk. “I was just a boy yesterday,” he says. “I feel like Tom Hanks. That movie can’t be just a movie. Life is so short.” Youth is a phantom limb, he thinks. “I can’t remember ever being this young.” Rosa says, “You’re not Tom Hanks.” I want to do everything all at…

Until Karen, he’d never met an adult who was afraid of the water, who didn’t know how to swim. This was just Kentucky — no ocean for miles — but still. Not long after he and his parents moved to Bardstown, into the big house with the big in-ground pool in the backyard, they seemed…

My old man used to tell me about rumors. He’d say that somebody wakes up in the morning and looks out a window at a clear sky and wishes for weather. And even if the weather doesn’t come, it is enough to start a rumor about it to make it real for people. + That…

When Magda was fourteen, she married her father. The ceremony was simple, packages of crepe paper and party favors tossed carelessly about the living room. She wore her sister’s white prom dress and her father wore a faded gray tuxedo from his college days. Her mother married them in a flowered sheet draped over her…

Give me a dog that likes to go the vet and I will give you one sad sack of a pet owner. These are the individuals that show up on the 6 o’clock news with something like fifty or sixty mongrels tied outside on chains or worse, are the type that make Captain or Miss…

Leah hates Bennie’s, but not because it’s where we first met. Four years of waiting tables and she’s tired of breathing in the stench and decay of rotting dreams. When it comes to her dreams, Leah pays attention. She lives in Adams Morgan but in a year is heading up the turnpike to take photography…

Whatever your reason, keep it to yourself. Don’t confront your neighbor about the all-night barking or the yard-shitting or the getting-loose-and-jumping-up-on-your-thighs. If you did, besides later knowing who killed the dog and to which address to direct his retribution, your neighbor would respond, “What the fuck are you going to do about it?” When he…