Koltyn liked Cinnamon Toast Crunch best. It turned him into a giant, grinding dozens of tiny pieces of toast between his teeth, savoring...

Lewis Vern was a self-proclaimed ludologist—that is, he claimed to know all things games. To his credit, he had mastered four different...

On a breathless night in Malta, light fragmented by bedroom shutters pries Maria’s eyes open. She leaves her empty bed. The church bells...

I’ve figured out that if I run the bath for 10 minutes on full heat and two minutes ice-cold, the water in my clawfoot tub will reach the...

I. Quest Before what happened to Christine, before arriving in Iraq, before even leaving Nebraska, all we knew for sure was  that there...

There were plans for a party at Ava’s place to celebrate the moment when the continents would converge, when land would finally touch...

There’s nothing I’m more sick of than the reliable tick of my grandmother’s grandfather clock, standing watch as it does over a living...

Part 1: Down by the Lake "Hey Tin Man, you think I could walk across that lake?" "I don't think the ice is thick enough, Rose." "No....

I’ll never forget his face, wide open to the harsh light of the screen, drinkin’ it all in. At’s why it happened, Da said. He was all...

We are, by nature, oddballs. Call us weird, extraordinary, freaky. Monsters. I will not dispute or argue the label. From the perspective...

Claire was Chris’s new roommate. Chris was after me to try dating her. Chris and I had been friends for about 12 years by then. We were...

Trixie had been writing for 10 years before she finally got published. It was a long slog, with dozens and dozens of bad short stories, a...

My friend reminded me of a house fallen in disrepair. The slanting roof, the peeling paint, the gutters hanging loose. It can take ten...

First, don’t even be at the zoo during a forecasted storm even though your mum guilted you into taking your Tita, her not-so-favourite...

The dried crunch of seaweed brought a crowd of swarming flies, the buzzing intermingled with gull calls. The tang of salt and iodine...

Excerpt from letter dated January 13, 1957: … I’ve been haunted from the moment I arrived in this place.  It’s different here, away from...

In the center of Old Town, where the ruins of Quevdo are located, there’s a top that’s been spinning for as long as anyone can remember....

After disco. Before AIDS. There was Joe. Joe wasn’t a model though he could have been. Northern Italian, he looked more Austria than...

Mama’s strides back and forth make sun and shadow fall in rhythm: dark light dark light. A drumbeat or a heart. Benita glances up from...

Kelly called J.J. and Brooklyn her “kids” and fed them drugs. A mix of fox terrier and Jack Russell, J.J. Larue was an absolute cutie...