Short Stories

8 MINThe rose was trying to get in again. She couldn’t blame it. Outside the wind was howling, a vicious, embittering thing, so ferocious it seemed animate. The plaintive scratch of the rose’s thin, narrow fingers…

8 MINNikki ignored the itchy spot just above her stubby ponytail and hauled the box of souvenirs into her third-grade classroom. She liked to go beyond the set curriculum and show the USA in relationship to…

11 MINFinding me on her doorstep, my sister Ruth gasps, “Aaron! Thank God! You’re alive!” Hardly the welcome I’d expected. We have a complicated relationship. I’m never sure how she’ll react to something I do or…

11 MINI am well-known as Amelia, the Aerial Acrobat. My husband, David Roberts, and I were married on August 16, 1971, two months after our daughter, Nicole, was born. We thought it was best I drop out…

7 MINCynthia Arnold always feels compelled to share her story when—on the drive back from Teotihuacan to Mexico City—the countryside passes by cluttered with squalled huts spilling forth ragged children to play in the dusty yard…

9 MIN“What would you do with eight more hours in your day?” sings an over-exuberant voice from the projection on the wall. A female with a few too many Enhancements. A couple of minor Enhancements may go unnoticed, but this actress has overdone it.

6 MINAlice looked around the room nervously, wondering again why she had decided to attend the writer’s conference. None of her friends was coming; she didn’t know a soul here. Across the room she saw a…

8 MINThe Ashcroft Hotel sat near the coast and waited for the next guest to arrive. Tyler Donovan was that next guest. However, he arrived in town just as the morning rush hour bottlenecked every major…

7 MINAs soon as the door of the T opened at her stop, the last stop on the green line, a gust of wintry air blasted Nancy back, scolding her to stay inside. But where would…