short story: results 73–89 of 89

For several days in succession fragments of a defeated army had passed through the town. They were mere disorganized bands, not disciplined forces.

It's 10 a.m. on Sunday morning when Doug calls to tell me that Captain Fun is having a sale on its entire stockpile of mannequins.

So you get fired for making another offensive comment to a coworker who actually is a fat slob with a bad attitude and fuck that eating disorder and clinical depression bullshit, and fuck your boss, too…

When I woke up without my little toe, I knew it was going to be the day.

Kaya is missing. She is nowhere on the beach and Steve is worried that she's gone swimming, and has slipped drunk into the ocean and drowned.

On 25 March an unusually strange event occurred in St. Petersburg.

You are minding your own business.

"Do you want to know what I think?" Eddie asks and you think, no dear god—not him again.

His cubicle wall shuddered for the third time in the last hour, and he automatically began fishing fallen thumbtacks and papers from the crevice where the wall met his desk. He'd tried talking to her. He'd tried making a joke of it. But no matter what he said, Patricia Trumble's enthusiasm, speed, and girth propelled her rolling desk chair into their shared wall space repeatedly each day.

My wife's sister called a few days ago to set up a get-together for this weekend. They only live an hour away, so I don't mind.

The problems with the house project and a good stiff drink seem to go together.

"Pat, you should start doing the wangs now so that the sass is nice and tacky," Tom says to me as he pumps the keg. Tom is wiry and handsome. I'm neither of these things.

"It's an Affirmative Action thing," said Jay Hamilton, Minoru Taniguchi's old friend and new colleague, who was African-American. "Not that any of the faculty will say it to our face."

A crucifix hangs beside the travel poster, which shows snow-capped Alps in Switzerland. Both are artifacts left by the room's previous tenant. A third artifact is newer, the silver-framed photograph of Jules's mother. She smiles beside the dying Jesus. This wall is the first thing I see when I awake.

"I would like to—I mean, I do write what I call closet fiction—"

Dr. Edwine was pontificating at his own reflection in a brandy Alexander puddle (a man his size had no fear of a ladies' beverage redounding poorly upon his masculinity).

Five years ago, my dad died.

Ellie, barefooted, has just stepped on a wasp. She doesn't feel it at first—not for the quick pangs of summer heat radiating off the gravel drive—but soon an ache travels up her leg and she lets out a shriek…

The party ended when someone threw the baby in through the window.