They were beautiful, inexplicably. Two white towers stood strikingly against the gray night sky, which was itself somehow diminished by the uplighting of city lights and the memories of snow still recent in the wind. Their many pointed angles seemed purposeful and implied the curves of the natural world without sacrificing the immediacy of unbroken… Continue reading Towers
Category: Other Fiction
Shark
For a pool shark, Logan didn't have to work very hard on his hustle; he was naturally terrible. He had no feel for where to hit the cue ball: left English, squirt right, follow, draw, stop—it was all gibberish to him. He was just happy to keep the ball from flying off the table. But,… Continue reading Shark
A Premonition
Costa stood beneath the dead hawthorn tree at the edge of the crater, peering downward against the sting of rising smoke. He was transfixed, and stood staring late into the night. His body shivered against the breeze coming off the cold rock face behind him, and the mockery of the hyaenas did not abate, but… Continue reading A Premonition
Lying for Sport
"Where are you from?" "Amber Lake." I wasn't. "Oh, it's lovely there in the fall, isn't it? I used to drive from Carverton all the way up to Blue Hill every Sunday to visit my grandparents—before they moved down to Cedar Grove—and it was so beautiful passing through Amber Lake. I never stopped there though."… Continue reading Lying for Sport
Orla and the Elm
When Orla was nine, her teacher took her class to the Museum of Environmental History to see a real tree. It was an elm. The museum's atrium was built around it, with the roots and soil just inches below visitors' feet under double paned glass. When Orla saw the tree she was overcome by an… Continue reading Orla and the Elm
Rookie Move
It wasn't the blood that disturbed him. It was the footprints. Red imprints of the bottoms of shoes circling around and on top of each other. Red circles, and red wavy lines, and red swooshes. Blood was natural, organic, the stuff of life, but the footprints along the surgical room floor were the most unnatural… Continue reading Rookie Move
The Last Laugh
He saw stars. He was pleasantly surprised. Seeing stars; it's not an uncommon metaphor, but he only now understood how accurate it was. Points of light, pink and blue and gold, and all very far away. They swirled around like glitter being stirred into a cauldron of ink. He'd never been punched before. He felt… Continue reading The Last Laugh
Somewhere Over Georgia
Fluffy clouds passed underneath like kernels of popcorn. Irregular shadows that looked like the Mandelbrot set dotted the featureless patchwork of green and brown parcels of land, interrupted by the perfect circles drawn by irrigation equipment. Highways connected distant cities like arteries, with capillaries and veins and valves all interlinked. At nighttime, the tail lights… Continue reading Somewhere Over Georgia
It Was the Solstice
One of the neighbor kids found him on the way home from school, laying awkwardly on the deck with his face in the water. The coroner said he'd only been out there like that for a day. That would have made it a Sunday. It was the solstice; I don't know why I remember that.… Continue reading It Was the Solstice
He Walks
He walks. Each shuffle step covers a thousand miles, and the scraping sound of leather shoe against asphalt wears away at his pride like high grit sandpaper. Someone makes eye contact with him. It's fleeting, and he sees the familiar in every face he passes as it confirms he exists only for a moment at… Continue reading He Walks
Warmup Pages 