The only air that could be felt in the church came from the cracked window Marianne was peering through. There wasn’t much of a view at...

“The first thing I ever heard was static,” he tells her. “Okay,” she says slowly.  The birth had been bloody, visceral, like a...

I’ve always loved dewy grass. In a manic pixie dream girl sort of way. In a manner too grandiose for my patch of grass, who’s dandelions...

Melissa lifted a pad of blue Post-Its out of her pencil case. She hunched over her desk, using her arm to shield her handiwork as she...

Olivia’s neighbor is out on her front lawn again. Kneeling in the dirt, tending to her beautiful, carefully cultivated flowers. If Olivia...

Every summer, they arrive here. They race here in their Range Rovers and Mercedes, hugging the bluffs, lustrous cars gleaming in the...

“Jan? Jan!” There was too much to pack. Jan stood in her room, hands clutching her kool-aid dyed hair, staring blankly at the mountainous...

I began my day in the dead of night by burying my sister’s best friend alive. It was because I couldn't sleep; I couldn’t focus on...

“Mary! It’s wonderful to see you. I’ve missed you fiercely,” Sandra says as she throws open her frosted door and ushers Mary through the...

And that night, watched over by the moon and twinkling stars, we swore to be better than our forefathers, every person and god who had...

I sigh as I look over the crowd, their smug smiles tinged with that little glint of fear. I’d hoped I had a little longer. Even just a...

You love that woman. Her squid-ink hair shredded and slicked back by rain. That expressive face, perpetually wriggling about in the...

I have seen it a thousand times: my mother’s face screws up in a snarl as she barks at the phone. Her shouts are fireworks, blasting...

I am truly sorry. Sorry to God, sorry to my mother, and most of all, sorry to my beautiful and lovely Eric. Hermiston, Oregon. A...

Nova Raven sits rather uncomfortably in a navy blue plastic chair. The gradual dampening of the cushion embarrassingly reminds Nova of...

Maxie squeezed her eyes shut and open again, stretching her arms to touch her headboard as the world shifted into focus. “Maxie!” Her...

In Elisha Abuyarsky’s heaven, the angel Gavriel has no wings. One day, with a small paper file tucked beneath his arm, he knocked timidly...

If you were to create a graph of social interest in Eloise Clark, it would look something like this: The first blips would appear about...

It was a normal night. Not the type of normal that reoccurs every day of every week of every year; those were the nights he spent sunken...

ACT I How festive everything was that blessed morn!; how the sun’s rays shone triumphantly like the bugles of the aether, the fading moon...