Geraldine, I'm serious give me that back, I don't have time for this... Because it's mine. Give it back now. It's ringing. If you don't give it back to me as soon as I'm done on the phone I'm coming to take it.

Yeah. Hi. Can I order something? Ok, give me two butter chickens and two naan breads. Yes that's my address. No, no apartment. Cash. How long? Thanks.

Geraldine you give me that right now. Where did you go? You better not be reading that. I swear when I find you.I don't know why I'm even buying

The waves crashed and slapped at the stones, slurping up mouthfuls of sand and dragging them back to the deep. Elk stood out on an outcropping, the letter held tight in his hands. He didn't need to read it again, had read it fifteen times already this morning. And besides that, he wasn't an idiot and knew what was happening..could see the signs pointing at the end.
The waves frothed and slapped at the sand and stones.
But a letter was for cowards. Dash a note and sneak out the back window and then move on with your life.
No...

We sat on our toboggan at the top of the hill behind the house. It wasn't much of a sliding hill, but it was easy to walk up, so, there you go.

Me, Jenny, Eric and Becky took turns sliding down on the hot pink crazy carpet and then struggling up the slope in ski pants and too big boots. It was only the third or fourth snow of the season and between the melts there was just enough of the white stuff to pick up a bit of speed on your descent.

Eric or Jenny came up with the...

"Someone left the goddammed gate open again, and the dog took off," my father yelled from the backyard.

Me and Bill were in the back shed smoking a crooked hash joint. When he started yelling, Bill panicked and dropped it, and then crushed it under his foot. But he didn't realize he wasn't wearing any shoes. He screamed as the cherry burnt into his sole.

I swallowed hard and waited for the inevitable.

Four deep breaths later, the door swung open on rusty hinges and my dad stood there, Taking up the whole of the doorway, blocking out the sun....

"Good night," the bar manager said, as he tapped a stack of bills on their side to even them out. The waitress dumped another pile of crumpled bills, coins and receipts on his desk.

"Good as any other," she said. The manager paused in his count and looked up from beneath a heavy forehead.

"Something wrong sweetie," he asked.

"No," she said and left the office, heading back to the front. The manager watched her walk away, thinking about what her ass looked like twenty years ago, and smiling to himself. He finished counting the money she'd dumped and dropped...

The sounds of the protest reverberated through the streets. Police on horseback formed walls, blocking the side streets, helicopters hovered overhead. The crowd pulsed and moved like blood in the veins. We held placards and shouted in time. People banged on drums and pots and pans and clapped their hands. Sirens wailed on either side.

Steel gates were pulled down or across the glass of storefronts. The media had terrified the small business owners and that terrified the public and then screamed about how we need to be stopped.

The fact they missed the point wasn't important. The fact they...

The car stalled. The roads were half washed out and the rain pounded like a blacksmith's hammer on the hood. The storms began a few days ago, but before that it had been a dry summer. After the first downpour, people started smiling and stopped fanning their faces. Life strained under the drops in vegetable and flower gardens.

After the first whole nights of dark heavy clouds, the constant grumble of thunder, people were still trying to be positive. Good for the forests, dry as tinder, they'd say. The river was too low anyway.

After a week and flooded basements,...

She ran off into the plants and tall grasses and let her body sway with the wind. She called it her meditation, the only break she had from the stresses of school and tests and parents and everything else that came with being a teenager.

The other two watched and smiled. The three of them were friends since the second grade. Nothing surprised them. They expected Andrea to do this. Jane and Nicole lit cigarettes and gossiped quietly while she moved back and forth, arms swaying, swing and shaking.

The wind picked up, the leaves fluttered and flapped. The gust...

She'd have preferred the electric chair to spending another night at her mother-in-law's cottage.

the mother in law doted and fussed over her son, as if he was a newborn. She made all the meals and cleaned everything and once she caught her wiping the mustard from his chin.

"Oh, I'll make the hotdogs, dear," she said. "Andrew likes them a special way. Wouldn't want you to waste all that time and not have them turn out. Why don't you go lay on the sand and get some sun. You could use it, you seem frightfully pale."

Emily forced a...

He sat in the truck parked on the gravel drive, his arm hanging out the window, a cigarette dangling from his finger. The radio was on and Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses was blaring.

She watched him from the behind the closed screen door.

He lowered the visor so she wouldn't be able to see his reddened eyes. Def Lepard's Pour Some Sugar On Me came on next, and he tweaked the volume nob. He could tell she was still looking at him.

He finished his cigarette and flicked it out the window. He took a long drink from the...