Joe thought we should dress up as the Holy Family for a Christmas card. “Since nobody knows who Eli’s dad is.” That kept him in the doghouse well into January. I don’t know why Mom got so bent up about… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

I press A7 on the vending machine — it shudders as my Mountain Dew gets stuck in the contraption, grunts like an old man coming in his sock. Its LED lights flicker as I kick the damn thing one, two,… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

He was full of the blarney, this one. The nuns had taught us how to fend off the amorous advances of boys but they hadn’t really told us how to cope with our own desires. Maybe they thought we didn’t… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

Big Sassy had a knack for breaking two things — balls (not the bouncy kind) and hearts. I’d been stationed at Lunar-Oho on mining duty when I first cast eyes upon her magnificence. Hair caked in grease, a pot-belly that… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

I am sitting here watching the news, numbed by the endless repetition of details, each time with just a little more added to the picture. The man standing there with a phone in his right hand and a raised arm… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

With a splash, Dale and Mallory became the only two contestants left hanging from the slippery monkey bars. They didn’t share much in common, besides their distaste for each other. Dale was shirtless, muscular — but not absurdly so —… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

Between my mother’s third and fourth husbands, she decided to go vegetarian. There must have been a boyfriend in between or something. Someone I have forgotten, that practiced yoga and charged crystals and stocked up on the green tea that… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

Minute FourFrank is omnipotent. The city is silent as a mausoleum. Millions shrunken to ashes by the first brutalising impacts, portent of billions more. Explosions tear people up like cartoon characters. Frank rages but the eardrums which might hear are… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

He kept the award in the bathroom on a shelf with an old box of band-aids. It hadn’t always lived there. At some point, he was sure, it must’ve been out in the living room, maybe even the kitchen, he… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.