Where the Laughter Starts
I’m 35, and I just got my sense of humor last week.
Everybody thinks they have a sense of humor – I always thought I did – but the truth is that almost nobody knows how to laugh when it really counts.
I’ve been in prison 10 years.
Armed robbery is...
Another word for justice
There were two guards. They handled him roughly. They tossed him into a metal room, and before he could stand up they hauled him to his feet and strapped him down to a cold and uncomfortable chair. In front of him, sat a dark haired officer in an unusual uniform....
Tango for Beginners
She’d seen them as soon as they’d come in. They sat down, alone, on the little benches and stared out across the wide wooden floor as though it were an ocean at high tide. It wasn’t just that they were alone, though: In a room full of dancers, it’s easy to spot the...
Dreaming
The mother was dreaming about the closet.
The closet was always there, just around the corner in Bill’s room, a closet with a lock on the outside.
She’d only been put in there three times, but it seemed like fifty because of the dreams.
No louvres....
Origins
This is how it happened.
Time is circular, so after the serpent convinced Adam and Even to bite the forbidden apple, they were given the knowledge of good and evil, made more like God, and expelled from paradise. Not being God, they did not understand why, and so...
The Mattress Inspector
Fully clothed, Richard Yoost lay flat as a plank across the covers on the king-size bed. It was ninety degrees out and only a slight cross breeze came through the bedroom windows. The plank position was his first response test, and he learned early on it left an...
Midnight Blue
I was alone in the forest. I was alone on the hill. The sky above me was midnight blue, and its darkness shone like a sheet of glass in the moonlight. But there was no moon. There were even no stars, though there should have been: the nearest town was dozens of...
The Dare
“How could you stand there naked in front of a bunch of strangers, stark naked?”
Phil didn’t get it, and that saddened Karen a bit. He usually got her perfectly.
“Well, for a shy person, it was the perfect job. I didn’t have to talk to anybody, or make eye...
Authority
Once, he had graded papers. People make jokes about a red pen, but it had been standard, back in those days, and the students hadn’t argued. The red, like the robe of an inquisitor, had meant authority. He was a polymath, teaching history and mathematics both … a...
The Shore
The keeper of the lighthouse took his indentured apprentice down to the beach for the first time yesterday. Down the narrow path between the crags that looked like teeth from a tiger and through the jagged points resembled nothing so much as tusks. The keeper showed...
