Cody was always getting interrupted. He lurched from sleep, the pale whine of a car alarm buzzing in the background. His feet had escaped the blanket during the night and felt thick and cold, no longer a part of him. His pillow was bunched under his right shoulder as if the mattress had a tumor. [...]

Tony Granik looks up at the silo, that blue angel of death, then over the acres that reach out as far as drowning arms. It’s two weeks until harvest, and he knows the corn hasn’t gotten the attention it needs. He knows that during growing season, corn is like a newborn baby, that it needs [...]

I have a sudden feeling I could tell you anything. It is not the feeling I created. It is not the same as when we said goodbye the first time, when you held me and we both became aware we had a body. It is not the same as when I felt that you were [...]

If the cow dies, the dwarf and his wife will have to buy their milk at the market. This would be devastating. Of course, the cow’s milk hasn’t provided any real nutrients for years now. Its head is like a fossil, or something Mycenaean. It’s like drinking watered-down spit, although the dwarf likes to call [...]

One more trip to the store for her cigarettes. He has come to hate the drive, something he found beautiful just months before. Now, the vitality of it repulses him—the violent green of the grass, the desperately flowering dogwoods, the creek bottoms churning and gasping with life. He doesn’t make it all the way to [...]

So many things can happen out of the country. Take for instance the indecision inherent in choosing just one flavor from a display of gelato. I could be so simple, really, if the world would just let me. I give instructions to newcomers. Point to the flavor you like. Ignore the roll of the eyes. Hold out several [...]

The police didn’t know how to handle the scene, a family of dead people. They wanted to understand how these people had died, whether it was murders. But they didn’t have the facts. So they couldn’t say with certainty. They proceeded, instead, with head scratching and coffee-cup clutching near the cordoned-off crime scene. Not one [...]

I wait for her at the blood bank on Chariot Street, and I know it’s her as soon as she walks in the door. I’ve been in the waiting room for forty-five minutes, ushering people ahead of me each time a nurse calls my name, pretending to put the finishing touches on paperwork I finished [...]

Listen to audio of this story. He feeds her pebbles, small and brown, that he collects from the playground or sometimes from the beach. He turns them around in his hand, inspecting each one for its color, before handing her a glass of sparkling water. There were days when she went without, days when he [...]

Miss.  I’m sorry but I need some air. I didn’t notice Everett’s note at the time, but it is scribbled in the margins of the short story I had my eleventh graders reading when he stormed out of class. The disruption played itself out like a scene from an absurdly dramatic, poorly acted movie.  I [...]