The Persephone Complex: Short Fiction: A Letter

My mother wasn’t able to have children. She’d been diagnosed with a severely “bicornuate” uterus. Its deep top cleft would not permit a fetus’ implantation or habitation. This congenital irregularity has been called both “horned” and “heart-shaped” in the clinical literature, depending, I assume, on the observer’s temperament. My mother, pleasantly surprised at my safe arrival after a brief and almost anonymous tryst on an Italian research trip she’d taken in graduate school, inclined toward the heart.

This Is What I Am: A Short Story on Land

Gordon Lewis hasn’t exercised since college. But if you saw him standing outside MacDuffy’s pub, a few blocks from the Clinton Hill Real Estate office, a lean not yet paunched figure, sucking down a Camel Light, you might think he doesn’t look half bad for someone caught in a five-year spiritual free fall. By some genetic miracle, Gordon’s pasty, 29-year-old skin hasn’t soured. Despite the alcohol and the cigarettes and the midday rub and tugs, there is still unharmed youth inside him, perfectly good unspoiled blood waiting to be shaken and stirred in the right direction.

Water on Stone: A Short Story on Pity

She had been telling me a story for most of our date, a story that seemed half-truth, half-lie. I wasn’t sure how we got on the topic, but I didn’t dislike listening to her speak. The woman was a lover, but she was not a friend. She existed in that hazy space between passion and convenience. She twirled her little brown braid around her index finger — she had pianist hands — and looked at me with her wet, green eyes. Her eyes had a certain blank hopefulness that reminded me of cow eyes.

The Solitary: A Novel Excerpt

A long table took up most of the room, and around it sat 16 men. As a group, they had a wild and wasted look, with skeletal limbs, hollow cheeks, unshorn beards, and fixed stares. Maurice submitted to the scrutiny of this assembly of saints like a martyr to the flames. His salvation depended on his winning a place among them. At the head of the table, Apa Zeno, the holy father of the colony, looked off vacantly and scratched himself. To his right sat his deputy, Elias, who raised a hand.

Getting Even: A Short Story by Gay Talese: Talese’s Long-Lost New York Fiction

Although the woman stood nearly a block away, he could see that she had spotted him, was waving at him from the corner of Lexington Avenue at Seventy-first Street, and so Angelo Janiero slowed down his taxicab even though, as he did so, he was not sure whether or not he would stop. He might just slow down to let the woman think he would stop, then drive right past her as if he had not seen her, turning the corner quickly before she could get his number.

A Precious Natural Resource: A Short Story on Desire

The boy’s name was Prashant, and he was tall, dark-skinned, broad-shouldered, brilliant. He impressed the other boys in his dorm at the elite American university by playing chess with them blindfolded, sometimes undertaking three or four games simultaneously. The hardest thing was that often, when they described their moves to him, he’d know the moves were wrong because they didn’t quite know the names of the rows and columns on the board. So, he’d need to correct their game and then make his own move. They found this very impressive, but it was actually pretty simple, if you’d practiced. It wasn’t real chess, only a parlor trick.

Magdalena from 9 to 3: A Story of a Chance Encounter

They were really very nice about it — which made it worse, you know — writing her to say how, while it wasn’t a great fit for them right now, they were very grateful for the chance to consider it, and had every hope her timely study of Polish cinema between the wars would find a lucky publisher extremely soon. (Were they taking the piss out of her? With the “timely”? The “extremely”? Nearly seven years on U.S. soil, still their sarcasm eluded her.) She had spent the springtime in a panic. Holed up in her quarters, guzzling cognac before noon.

Chubby Bunny: A Short Story on America

Professor Park considered himself an everyman. There were ups and downs, but his average annual earnings before he left South Korea exceeded 90 million won. He thought that he was on the verge of falling out of the middle class though, believing that the monthly entries in his bank account were not big enough numbers to rely on after his retirement. All his life, Professor Park had been such a person, till his moment of death.

The Death of the Artist: A Short Story of Contemporary Art

My friend, I’ve decided this will be the last piece I ever send you. You’ve been my editor for, what, forty years now? Forty-five? Jesus, you know I love you, dear man — dearest — and always will. But this is it. Consider it my resignation, if that much matters. You and I both know I’m well past retirement. And though I know we always said we’d never let ’em lick us, that we’d never let it get us down, yet I’m tired, old man. Tired, and I want to leave this city. While I still have time. A little time.

The Death of the Author: A Short Story of Rebellion

Like so many present-day projects, the novel writing of Clayton Daniels began as a joke and grew into a serious commercial and cultural enterprise. His stories weighed so heavily as artifacts that they were on the verge of dismissal as frivolities. While studying for the bar, still wet and green and knobby-kneed, he wrote a first-person account of digital addiction called The Glass Gutter, in which he sarcastically catalogued the pain of a young man spending all his time swiping and scrolling, watching videos of robberies gone awry, murderous road rage episodes, men slipping on bicycles and skateboards and, to use outdated slang, racking their nards.

The People Imagine a Vain Thing: A Short Story of Damnation in the American South

Mrs. Ellison hadn’t expected half the town to congregate in the park like an after-church buffet, but as her girlfriend told her nothing about the man she was meeting beyond “He seem alright, you can’t believe everything you read online,” the old woman was grateful for so many watchful eyes. Passing through a motley of tweed suits and floral hem dresses, her granddaughter, Rosie, started to moan, dropping her plush tiger and flapping her hands. Mrs. Ellison picked up and slapped the dust off that old cat whispering “Hush chile” and fixed Rosie’s hat to obscure the top half of her face.

Bloodline: An Excerpt from Lee Clay Johnson’s New Novel

The distant siren goes off at dawn, a warning that the turbines are starting and the water will soon be rising. Miss Becka sits on her porch drinking instant coffee, an open journal in her lap containing notes of bird sightings. All the usual suspects this morning. Even the hummingbirds are zipping around. Then a surprise visitor, a little songbird the color of the sky, landing on a branch of the shadbush and picking off a larva. When Miss Becka lifts her mug, the bird shoots straight up into the canopy. A cerulean warbler. It traveled over three thousand miles just to be right here.

Light Travels at the Highest Possible Velocity: A Short Story About Guilt and Silence

In Seattle, at approximately 2:55 a.m., nearly twenty years ago, when I was sixteen, I drove too fast into a four-way intersection while talking on my mobile phone, turned too wide on a left, rode up onto the sidewalk, and crashed into a pedestrian who’d been waiting for the light to change. She died instantly. Her name was Melissa and she was a member of the Spokane Tribe of Indians and had grown up on her tribe’s reservation in Eastern Washington and moved to Seattle for college but only made it through one semester before she dropped out.

I Won :): A Short Story About Glory and Shame

16 HOURS OUT IT WAS COLD as frozen shit outside; the gym heater in Lock Haven PA’s only Holiday Inn was broke; so at 6AM, with 5 pounds to cut before sunrise, cocooned in a black sweatsuit, terrifying the earlybird businessmen & hotel staff; jumping rope & shadowboxing like a raging bull in the hottest corner of the 3rd Floor hallway, Pedro Cunha looked like a fucking maniac. Right before he got in the van Coach said, “You look fat.” Pedro said, “Nah, I’m on weight,” even though he had the same suspicion; he’d been too scared to weigh himself after the self-confrontation in his dorm mirror.

In the Course of Developing Pet Names: A Short Story About New Love and Old Dogs

They discovered who they would be to each other. Sweet and maternal — her last boyfriend had called her “bean,” or “baby” — or cool and adult. This one would not be her baby. He didn’t seem to want to be, first of all. Second of all she didn’t want him to be. The soft part of her had guided her before and she wanted the hard parts leading now. She was older now, this seemed the lesson of her younger years. Her last relationship had failed for many reasons, among them that she’d found it impossible to be someone’s baby and also to tear fuckably at their clothes.