Patricia O’Donnell Four young women make their way through groups of people on spread-out towels and blankets. This is the third day of unusually warm weather for June in Maine, and the beach is crowded. They find a spot close to the water, near the line where the sand is wet, and shake out their beach towels. One woman sits cross-legged on her towel in a flowered sundress. Blond hair wisps out from under a floppy straw hat. ...

Ashleigh Eisinger Jessie stands before me, a circus mirror image of the woman I married ten years earlier. Slight and shriveled, the sight of her furthers my longing for the plump blonde that used to laugh with me, that same woman who would not hesitate to shear off her top and slacks before crawling into bed with me on a Saturday afternoon, would let me stroke her skin until we could take it no longer and gave in to all of our desires —...

Alan Drew PART 4 OF 4 Read Part 1 Here Read Part 2 Here Read Part 3 Here “Everything all right, Sarah?” Roberta yelled out from her desk as she passed in the hallway. It was the next morning. Sarah thought she might be able to slip by again, not have to speak to her until lunch time, but Roberta must have been waiting. She stopped, leaned against the doorway to Roberta’s classroom and blew out a deep breath. “You usually say...

Alan Drew PART 2 OF 4 Read Part 1 Here She and Dominic had only been meeting for three weeks, but it had really started months before that with a journal entry she wasn’t supposed to read. Nothing about Seth’s appearance betrayed a bat wielding attacker, and Bryson, he was on his way to UCLA, a good student, one of her favorites. What the fuck happens to people? I mean, they get old and turn into fascist dictator nazis who’ve...

Daniel Frankenfield Rick and I sat in the living room, breath falling from our mouths. The television was on but no cable to watch. We needed money. We needed cigarettes, food, heat and all the other things, but mostly money. There was a Uni-Mart up the street. Rick toyed with a hand rolled cigarette until the thing fell apart in his hands. It was true. It was a solid looking piece and could have fooled anyone. Rick paced the...

Robert Rosenberg Her days are structured by the repetition of small unanswerable questions: The Silver State. Why only silver? In the morning, in slippers, Asail steps down the hall, stops to check that he’s still sleeping, and opens the front door. A grey towel is draped over her shoulder. She changes to flip flops she found for 99 cents at the Walgreens across the street. She loves that Walgreens, loves its miraculous selection of...

Saramanda Swigart 1. Twins, Age 34 Small One-Bedroom Apartment, East Village, Manhattan The knocking lasts an hour and forty-seven minutes. As always, the neighbors stay quiet. I lie still, listening. It begins timidly at 1:32 a.m. and ceases at 2:49 a.m., according to my bedroom clock. I keep the clock six minutes fast, so truly the sobbing begins at precisely 2:43 a.m., and it savages my heart. I chew at a nail. I chew two or...

Kathie Giorgio Although she invited him to stay afterward, even mentioning the chilled-for-months wine, he left, mumbling something about having an early morning church service and he’d call her. Delly thought she was a cat person, even though she didn’t own any cats. She collected dozens of feline figurines, but whenever she went to the local animal shelter to possibly adopt a real cat, she always heard her mother’s voice, echoing...

J.T. Bushnell His attraction to her had a small current of disgust running along its edge. Tommy met her at a party through a mutual friend, Edgar, who had once almost burned down the fraternity house by spurting a mouthful of vodka at a raised match. Edgar was married now and had a job organizing an annual wine festival, and the parties he threw were lame, the type where everyone sat in the living room, legs crossed, chatting quietly...

Gary Percesepe When his wife asked him for a divorce M drove down the New York State Thruway from New Paltz into Manhattan and checked into the Pierre Hotel. Catherine hadn’t been specific; it had been understood for some time that things were not working. M pouted, pleaded, tried to be charming, threw a fit, attempted to argue her out of it, and finally resorted to negotiating, but nothing worked. Catherine was firm. “Look, let’s...