short story

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…

When I got to school and learned I was the primary suspect for lynching the cat, I was simultaneously disheartened and perplexed.

Joan poked her head in his condo office. “Is it possible…” “No.” He didn’t even turn away from the computer.

Bella emerged from the late twilight, into the hotel lobby, like a sufficiently recovered she-wolf entering an open dell from a dim forest of lost time. Although it could not…