Oscar Flimmer, wearing a zoot suit, hesitated before he walked through the lobby of the Nez Perce Apartments, but once he stepped through the glass doors onto the broad sidewalk along Tower Street, the lone silver tooth in his smile caught the last fling of sunshine. He […]
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This is how it begins, standing in front of the toilet, three or four times a night, the stream broken and bashful. His body has betrayed him. But that’s all right. His mind has grown weary too. He stumbles back to bed. The planning begins next, getting […]
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After Sally was struck by lightning, she’d whirl around whenever she heard the slightest disturbance behind her, startling whoever happened to be there with that crazed look in her eyes. I had known Sally a long time and she’d always striven to be normal. This tempest was […]
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Roman slipped out of his sleeping bag and reached over to untie the flaps of his teepee tent. During the night, the rain had turned to snow, and in the faint light, he could see the snow was beginning to pile up. It would be a long, […]
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The Piper PA-25 Pawnee bucked once, gasped, and then died. Hmm…this is interesting, Rico thought, peering out the tiny side window. He quickly calculated: he had at least a half-mile to the runway. He pushed the nose down to come in lower, hoping to get underneath the turbulence. […]
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Elise touched her cheek, squinting into the radiant morning light streaming in through the living room window. She stood, walked to the couch, and reached down to touch the spot where he had been sitting the night before. Was it a dream? No. He had been here. […]
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At first, she thought it was a dream, but she’d felt the whisper of breath tickle her cheek and the gentle stroke along her back. Elise stared up at the strange shape of pale light on the ceiling. Outlines of things in the room began to take […]
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The therapist, Dr. Blankenship, continued to stare down at the writing pad in his lap when she told him she had grown weary, and not only weary but bored with life. “Yes, that’s it, I’m bored,” Elise said. “And you think that by ending your life you […]
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Pell couldn’t recall ever seeing his life move away from him in a long, never-ending road, but it must have seemed that way to him once. Now, however, as he drove straight into the blood orange heart of the dying sun, he could only envision how the […]
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The big-humped bull crashed out of the thick tangle of salt cedar and Russian olives along the river. He was the same bull they’d seen yesterday, the one they’d hoped to rouse today. He spotted the three cowboys, snot flying from his wide muzzle, eyes on fire, […]
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