short story

Waiting. Frustration. Brittany stepped back into the warm, rural home. “What’s taking dad so long?” Her mom was unconcerned. “The snow probably slowed him.” “That truck will go through anything…

If someone tells a fabricated or unreal story, yet appears sincere, would you describe that person as simply a liar, or insane? Sometimes it’s transparent. Like the time a guy…

“Say that again?” The golf-shirt guy with grey hair and a few too many beers put his glass down on the hotel bar, drifted his red eyes to the new…

Young boys do stupid things. I was no exception. Back then if you had asked, “What was I thinking?” I could only reply that I wasn’t. In retrospect, my justification…

He didn’t die suddenly. You could say it was a progression towards intimate judgment.

Each instant — while jumping from the top of one moving train car to the next — inspires an intoxication of worldly detachment and a paradoxical dichotomy.

What surprises me most was not how its past intimidation had diminished (dying used to seem daunting), but how mundane the notion had become after contemplating it for so long.

Pain. It was never a stranger. When they were still together, Freda once said he not only had a high tolerance for it, he seemed to embrace it. Her comment…

“I wouldn’t call it suicide.” Not a trace of morbidity or fear was discernible in his response. “I’d call it ‘letting go.’”

It’s tempting to say it didn’t happen. That it couldn’t have happened. That it was actually the beer and whiskey telling a tale. And I’d be OK with that. Not…