Herman played with his G.I. Joes in the backyard. Technically, he played with his Cobras in the backyard because he only had the bad guys, the bad guy base, the bad guy vehicles. He liked the bad guys best. The good ones were so normal looking, Duke the blonde-headed leader so like Chad Simpson, who…

Dark skies today he says and she says I love the look of clouds and it has been so long since she has said anything that he isn’t sure how it all works. He sits. He stands. He turns around and closes his eyes and opens them and she is sitting there, her knees above…

S Even though I’m silent, my mom puts her finger against her lips as Dad yells. He’s upstairs at the front door, directly above us, yelling I hope at neighbors, not investigators. They’ve been in front of our house for at least five minutes. The basement Mom and I are hiding in smells like wet…

She hated mountain driving. The mountains might fall, snap, at any given moment, rocks and dirt and trees tumbling. Or maybe just a shift, a closing in, the mountain sides narrowing the road, so that she held her breath, curve and curve again, nausea building. He didn’t seem to mind. He drove fast, confident, and…

It started so easily, a single October second, the movement of tendons and bones that felt habitual within Thomas’s hands, not theft but an action without judgment, nothing more than the transfer of metal and leather from one dark place to another. It was something others could have done at no expense, the kind of…

It lasted only a few moments. When I surfaced there were soft murmurings. I wore the only good dress that I had, a purple pastel with little sea pearls sewn around the collar. My husband went under after I did. I wanted to be first person he saw when he opened his eyes. I wasn’t,…

Abner was a child who wanted to get slimed. He hungered for the spread of slime across his skin, his favorite the viscous kind that crept to cover, coat, encase. He oozed homemade do-it-yourself Mad Scientist slime though his fingers and hoped someone would cover him in goop. He invited his best friend Elmer to…

Skimming Jason called me last June. I owed him two thousand bucks — party favors for graduation bashes. I had too many friends when I was in school. Jason wasn’t calling to party. I could’ve kept avoiding him. But he called instead of showing up, so I figured I’d try reason. Jason’s big, but he…

Someone suggested swimming and someone else said that in this weather all we need is another incident. Someone recalled that there was an expression that perfectly explained this very moment. Someone said that yes they remembered it, lightning doesn’t strike twice, and someone else said that as a matter of fact that’s happened to a…

Adie usually finds them in the odd places. We had our wedding outside by a river. She found a dead bird, probably taken down by a stray cat, under one of the folding chairs that we used, and then she brought the thing home. When it comes time for presents, our friends know Adie and…

Cindy and Leah were nearly identical twins—both had almost-white skin and almost-black hair, but Leah’s eyes were a strange pale green and Cindy’s were a strange pale brown, more like a shade of orange. Also, Leah could make things appear, and Cindy could only make things disappear. When we were in elementary school, both seemed…

A guy with breasts sings down at the bar, Rick becoming Richelle. She’s raising money for estrogen and to turn her “rocket into a pocket.” In Seoul, she says, they do the operation for a steal. She tells bad Bush jokes, and shares her getting-to-be-Richelle travails. Toward the end of her act, she croons her…