Opposite Pissec sits ghoulish Gottfried Baumauer, a tall, skinny workaholic with dark-ringed eye sockets and long, yellowing smoker’s fingers. He’s thirty-eight. He doesn’t say much. He drinks a lot of tea – likes it strong...

From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about...

These balls are awfully dusty – if only I knew a little slut who was good at polishing balls…

Alice is fictional. This isn’t.

Sebuah cerpen yang tidak bagus, tetapi siap adalah lebih baik daripada sebuah cerpen yang kononnya bagus, tetapi tidak siap-siap.

My name is Patricia Lauren Bordeaux, and I, like my creator before me, am a very lonely vampire.

Pissec approaches Pamela Geiger’s cubicle, itching in rhythm with her. He wants to ask her a question while Kalist is out of earshot. She’s not a grass, he’s sure, but stupid people die first.

He had read much of things as they are, and talked with too many people. Well-meaning philosophers had taught him to look into the logical relations of things, and analyse the processes which shaped his...

Before he went away, he had heard all about the self-made girl, and there was something in the picture that strongly impressed him. She was possible doutbless only in America; American life had smoothed the...

I learned there were lots of realities in the world.

He had had no experience in asking for a job with a big organization, and Mr. Dilling was making him aware of what a fine art it was–if you couldn’t run a machine. A duel...

I am unbelievably nervous.It is most unlike me.This girl is really messing with my mojo.

My whore of a brother has done it again.” “Then, as always, orders me to clean up the mess.” “I think I hate him.” Poseidon to his brother, Zeus.

We all fall down.

A black-haired bitch with man’s hands, widow Liza Van der Bruggenziltch-Finch makes all the important decisions. She is a power-hungry dominatrix. Orwell is her slave. (No one ever sees him.)

Only men with intelligence, confidence and absolutely no empathy at all can progress upstairs.

On a nightstand in a teenager’s room, a glass vase filled with violets leans precariously against a wall. The only thing saving the vase from a thousand-piece death on the hardwood floor is the groove...

The last clear thought I have is of my grandmother’s rust-colored wall clock ticking away in the darkness of my apartment—my sanctuary where I dreamed and desired and hoped for goodness and love. I wonder...

Inside a wool jacket the man had made a pocket for the treasure and from time to time he would jiggle the pocket, just to make sure that it was still there. And when on...

She stared at the faded tile floor before her feet, but knew his every step around her small kitchen. When Martin touched the coffee cup patterned curtains he must assume she’d made, her fingers throbbed....

The Scottish sun, shocked by having its usual cloudy underpinnings stripped away, shone feverishly, embarrassed by its nakedness.

I want to feel like I’m making a difference in this world. And I want some time for living rather than just working. Life is for living, isn’t it? It can’t be all just for...

I have read that long ago there was a land of glass castles that sank beneath the sea. It was not called Atlantis, but Lyonesse. This happened before history and across the ocean, but when...

Baumauer sits at home in silence in the evenings planning how to impress his rigidly strict father who’s in his late seventies, but who still enforces the same dynamic between himself and his three, guilt-ridden...

I was cautious in what I said before the young lady; for I could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes that half...

A sound from upstairs sends my thought process reeling. It’s just a small noise, perhaps the sound of your feet brushing the crimson carpet in the bedroom? It’s not loud or menacing, but it sends...

she should have told me that times slides away on a hillside of lose shale and takes everything in its path-dreams, opportunities, hopes. And youth. It takes that fastest of all.

You have to make choices even when there is nothing to choose from.

He stood just near the club’s steps, his back to me along the foggy English night, and it was not until I’d passed him and began my ascent of the many steps that I’d heard...

The beagles are partying under Geiger’s desk.

Man, that kind of little honeybee just buzzes from flower to flower.””Maybe, but honey is sweet, you know?

I won’t have you calling me Miss Tuttle. That’s what the doc calls me. And the lady at the bank. One takes my temperature and the other my money. Friends don’t take anything—they give.

Life: I’ll never understand it.

I don’t want to be a machine, and I don’t want to think about war,” EPICAC had written after Pat’s and my lighthearted departure. “I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever...

I’m following hot on her heels, smarting from her latest rebuttal, and I can’t contain my temper as the flood of rejection washes over me, tossing me precariously close to the edge.

Sisyphus, I. I cling to my rock, you don’t have to chain me. Stand back! I roll it up—up, up. And … down we go. I knew that would happen. See, I’m on my feet...

It is better to take the other road, even if it’s longer. Get a car, maybe” Green Eyes

Do I need to fire the little prat yet?” Liza Van der Bruggenziltch-Finch.

Maxwell D. Kalist is a receiving teller at a city bank, Orwell and Finch, where he runs an efficient department of twenty two clerks and twelve junior clerks. He carries a leather-bound vade mecum everywhere...

Yo, I’m in position. Ready when you is.”Gareth cringed while crossing the wide concourse, checking both directions. The giant hallway was the main drag of a ghost town, its only residents a solitary custodian sweeping...

Are you crazy? I’m not dead. I’m just very late.

A gossip spread a rumor, and became notorious from the deed. The gossip then started a fire beyond their control, and when it spread, the gossip spread the word around, but people just ran away....

Gods, the love that saturated the room was so potent that Arabella couldn’t breathe.This was what she wanted. Someone who wouldn’t let go, someone who would love her so much he’d wait decades to be...

She had an emptiness in her eyes like a ghost tired of haunting.

We pick the people who populate our personal lives as much for who they make us as for who they are. I chose Anna for the person I became in her presence, and in this...

It’s late and most of the clerks are at home in their beds, dreaming of swimming in pools filled with real money.

We leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it’s hard to tell which one is us. How many versions do we abandon over the years

Misery comes to miser; joy comes to wiser. (A Very Hot Cup of Tea, Empathy)Juvenile invites, youth tries, adult applies, and the old man dies. (A Straw Man, Empathy)In everyone, there lives a superhero. (The...

Respect me how Jenna? By choosing not to spend anytime with me? By not even bothering to let me knowwhere you are? By rolling in when you feel like it? Wellthen… I think we need...

Exactly. You like me. The word you use was like. You’ll find someone better than me. Someone you’ll love and not just like.