Of the many inevitabilities that Neil McNeil had dreaded upon turning thirty, like the encroaching baldness that threatened to expose the angular contours of his head, or the bursting of Bubble 2.0 that would sink his already-ailing web design consultancy, or the never-ending worry that his wife might uncover certain episodes of ages-ago untowardness that [...]
0. Noxious Stimuli
With all of her fingernails Diana scratches a spot on her lap over and over without any awareness of what she is doing.
“A five-second pinch. Five seconds. A pinch. And they want to destroy me.”
Of all places, this clean, windowless hospital office. Diana at twenty-three has never cried in front of anyone, and [...]
When Samantha de Rosetis started falling again and again, and again and again and again, everyone had theories.
Two mismatched men stamp their boots through the hard snow.
They appeared overnight at the end of the summer and I awoke to the hum and the steely banging of their bodies against the screen of my bedroom window, hovering in drunken loops around a smooth tennis ball-sized nest the color of peanuts.
(earlier version appeared in Leland Quarterly #1.1)
My new father Steve said he would be waiting there for us at six o’clock but it was almost eight. It was as dark as eight o’clock and under the eaves of our new home my mother and I sat on our luggage, because it was raining and there [...]
(originally appeared in the Threepenny Review #107 Fall 2006; erroneous version appears in the O. Henry Prize Stories 2008)
The Dalmatian
Among the tall clusters of evergreen that obscured the horizon in all directions, Shelley looked up and saw the sun vanish behind the darkening cloud cover. Her left hand was too cold to grip the copper [...]