I fetch her the toy bricks Father made from a fallen hornbeam, but she rolls her eyes, hands me a slice of castellated krustenbrot, sends me to town for a bushel of ginger. She bakes model cottages with strudel-work windows, byres with almond-paste oxen, kennels with marzipan puppies. When her schloss cake collapses from its surfeit of turrets, she simply laughs and starts again. Soon she’s building sturdy barns with dumpling mortar, merchants’ houses with pumpernickel shing

Up the worms came, rotini-thick, chubby palindromes of flesh. “Sorry,” I said. “That’s OK,” said the dirt-specked brain at the bottom of the can. “You could use a win.” "I could blame my misery on the family business but truthfully I wanted it." I would’ve licked glass for a tin can, an old boot—the smallest tug of resistance would cure my everything. Instead: limp nothing. It wasn’t the ocean’s fault—on the other side of the dock, my sister Maude reeled in cascades of wr

Reprint. Originally published in Choatic Merge's last issue The guy in the pizza shop is a conspiracy theorist who thinks giving women too many rights makes them violent offenders who’ll knock a man to the floor over a thin-crust pepperoni. Most days, you linger outside and wait for him to get sidetracked by a call, so his kid takes over the counter – he’s a quiet lad, who just sort of mumbles and passes your order along to his dad after he’s hung up. No fuss, then. You can p

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Travelogue I have been to Idaho, but it didn’t leave much of an impression. Unlike Utah, with its starched, bunchy mesas and salt flats....

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Anita Diaz, paralegal at Dan Newsome’s law offices in Alpine, Texas, knew when she heard her cellphone buzz that the news would not be...

The New York winter chill disappeared when Jean entered the lobby of Maxine Elliott’s Theater, crowded with women. It was Jean’s fourth...

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Tuesday night turned into Wednesday morning, and we were nowhere near home. Me and the boys were always on that pendulum, swinging from...

After their early dinner their last night in Provincetown, they walked to the beach. Light reflected off the water, sprinkled the waves,...

This trip Myrna Sweeney was in first-class. Free drinks though it was still too early for a beer. More legroom so her knees wouldn’t be...

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The painter’s wife was instantly recognisable: she was hurrying barefoot along the cracked stone path that linked the lodge’s drained...

He checked into the hotel early in the afternoon and paid with cash. The name he used was Richard Sanderson. The identification he...

It’s around five-thirty when I clock out. Mike is protesting outside the clinic again. He’s got this hand-written placard that says...

“When did this happen?” Paula says as she scrolls through her son’s photographs on the laptop. “What?” he asks. Jarred by his question,...