Southern Fried Shorts

We gather around our meal in long lines, like tentacles. Father is there with sharp knife gleaming. He strikes downward, again and again, ...

“How are you doing?” the doctor asked. “Not bad for a dying man,” I said. “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” said the nurse. ...

There’s something about the taste of blood in my mouth, when the pain grows numb, when the fists flying into my face, into my chest and stom...

The men carried her off in chains. The boy wept. A crushing loneliness descended upon him, and he called out “Callisto!” but she did not hea...

I don’t know when it began, exactly, but I know that it happened. I know that it happened because it’s still happening. I peek through the b...

The light at the end of the tunnel was not what you expected it to be. Instead of bright and warm and comforting, you felt it burn. It felt ...

Nothing matters, she said, but only it did. Everything mattered. Fuck you, she said. I love you, I said. She took my hand in hers. She held ...

Sheila clutched a Swiss army knife in her hand. She extracted a small blade to carve an opening in the cardboard box surrounding her. This r...

Uno I was born in a pickle jar. My first view was of the inside of a kitchen cabinet. Stubborn bits of label and glue that would not wash of...

Jelly watched the shadow orbs bounce around the room. They transformed her perceptions, changing the soft lighting and filtering it into a p...

I understand how the person I used to be shaped the person I am today. I see it now as I look at myself in a distant time. I’m awkward. My h...

Dear Them, In the beginning, we believed the fairy tales, the myths, the legends. We took all of the stories, processed them, embraced them,...

A class of children sat in a circle at the back of a parking lot. In the center of this circle, a man stood and talked to his young congrega...

The first time I saw him, his face was pounded in. It was nothing more than bits of bone and flesh and a pool of blood. He was beautiful in ...

I found the first of the cavemen in the loose ground behind Momma's flowers. All around me, the roses bloomed in hues of red, white, yel...

Despite the significance of her name in the Hindu religion, dreams never really sat well with Maya. In fact, the more she attempted to inges...

Why? Sadie looked around for the source of the voice. She looked under the bed, in the closet, leaned her head out the bedroom door, and pee...

Jeremy stared at the scene through the grime coating his small hospital window. Beyond a gravel rooftop he spied a speck of blue sky breakin...

… and the beach fell away … When Charlie woke up, the room spun around him. He held his hand to his head and looked to the window. A shadow ...

A man lay splayed out against the asphalt. A thin but widening circle of pooling blood crowned his head. His face was pale and white. Beads ...