Category: Fiction

Like jamming an ax into our necks, Mrs. Gallager shoved her foot on the brakes of the school bus. Our heads crashed against the backs of the gray metal seats in front of us. Our silence was spewing out of our gaping mouths. Then...

The sky was a deeper blue than our own. Blue enough that the distant mountains merged with it almost without notice. The hills were closer, surrounding me like a thick woven carpet speckled with little stone houses embedded in a...

Still recovering from Long COVID, Anne pushes her walker down the hall. Once ill, she became unsteady on her feet. She has on a floral print dress in a style she has always liked. Aiden, her son, has brought Starbucks and waits...

Being angry was nothing new for Michael. He was born irritated; had heard the stories ad nauseam from his mother and aunts. If he was crossed, he remembered. To forgive and forget was not on his horizon. He tried to ignore...

“No more church!” Dad growled while shaking his well-muscled fist; “Sunday’s my one day off, and I’m not spending it with a bunch of good-doers.” Mom, dressed in her full choir robe, seemed to shrink. Garith, though, jumped and...

He had come to Big Sur. His goal wasn’t to surf but to see the sunset over the Pacific. A group was forming on the earthen and grass plateau at Molera State Park. Many folks with the same idea, he mused, watching a frisbee throw...

He had come to Big Sur. His goal wasn’t to surf but to see the sunset over the Pacific. A group was forming on the earthen and grass plateau at Molera State Park. Many folks with the same idea, he mused, watching a frisbee throw...

Bobby Rose strapped down the pine logs stacked high between the bolsters of his trailer. The resin smell of freshly cut trees circled the truck as Bobby secured the flat hooks. Before tightening the final straps, he paused for a...

“Robbers!” my four-year-old daughter whispered frantically. “I can hear them dragging our TV across the floor!” She was standing by my bed at 11pm wearing her kitty pajamas and clutching her blanket. My daughter smelled like...

She would give herself over to the mountain—the hungry, earthen temple that needed human sacrifices to stand. Some were seized with a blanket of snow and given the favor of a decent burial. Manmade, preemptive strikes to avert...

She sits motionless on the narrow windowsill. The sheer white curtain covers her profile, like a bride behind her veil ready to face a new life before her. Her ears begin to twitch at the sound of a bird’s chirp in the...

My boyfriend came with a lot of rope. The day he moved in with me, along with boxes and boxes of his stuff, I was worried that he would fill up every corner of what used to be just me. He’d filled the boxes with the usual...