She leaned over, sideways from her stool, all tits and lips and curly hair falling in his direction.

"Got a light," she asked, sticking a cigarette in the corner of her painted mouth.

He set his beer down, just foam left and dug into his right pocket. Pulled out a lighter and slid it across the plywood painted like mahogany bar. She looked at the lighter, and moved her lips into a pout. Leaned in even closer and said "A gentleman would light it for me."

"You're in the wrong place if you're looking for gentlemen," he grunted, looking straight...

Victoria and her sister Elizabeth spent their Sundays in the shopping district of their small town, on what they called their "promenade," saying the word in the closest thing they could affect to a french accent.

They would start in cafes and sip teas or coffees, nibbling shortbread, or butter cookies. They would each attempt to look both beautiful but also very bored, and would study each other for comparison later on.

When their cups were empty, they would walk, slowly, and purposefully along the narrow cobblestone streets. Looking in the window display of the second-hand and conscription stores and...

Sophie stood at the window, the curtains snug around her shoulders,trailing behind like a dress, or veil. The sun was dipping down behind the trees across the way.

He should be home by now, she thought, chewing the already ravaged thumbnail on her right hand.

She thought about the fight they had the night before. How she had held onto the seeds of those feelings for so long they had germinated and grew and soon the roots were twisted around with her insides, and the branches and leaves moved with her arms.

The anger had grown and become parasitic. And...

The gate closed behind them with a soft click. They crept along the grass, still wet from the afternoon rain, to the french doors. No lights were lit on this side of the house.

They stopped at the door and reached for the knob.

"He was supposed to leave it unlocked," one voice said behind a ski mask.

"Try the other one," another ski mask said.

The other knob turned and the door swung open, into an office. One wall was an inset bookshelf. And the second ski mask whispered she'd always wanted one of those.

"Marry a doctor, like...

"Birds are terrifying because they used to be dinosaurs and they are just waiting for us humans to stop remembering that fact. Waiting for us to turn our back. And then, just when we think we're safe, BAAAAMMM! All those cute little sparrows and robins and doves turn into raptors and shit - but now they can fly too, so there is nowhere safe. Seagullsaurus will shit on us and then swoop down and gobble us up as we stand there, freaking out about getting shat on.

"Imagine all the pigeons in cities growing razor sharp fangs and an unquenchable...

her bedroom wall was a collage of every valentine's day card, folded secret note, doodles, drawings, things her friends had written before their father's got a job in another city and moved. Streamers, deflated balloons, pressed leaves, plastic flowers, candy wrappers, subway, bus and concert ticket stubs. Polaroid pictures and regular rectangle pictures and pretty much anything else a teenage girl might come across in her lifetime of movement.

The detective went over every piece thumb-tacked, taped or stuck to the wall, writing in his little notebook.

"Usually they just run away for a few days," he said. "Then they...

The ceremony was fine, stuffy and long but fine. The party had been alright, except that her father had booked a stuffy classical six piece when they really wanted to get a soul band.
But the father-in-law was paying so you could only say so much, and she never ever stood up to him anyway. So he had to spend five hours in a restrictive tuxedo, stealing glances at her as she danced with her father, with the best man, nodding and smiling as old ladies pulled at his arms so they could kiss his cheeks and congratulate him, telling...

"His eyes closed with a sinnister grin?" Rabbit said. "What does that even mean? His eyes were grinning? Or the grinning caused his eyes to close? I don't get it. The imagery just doesn't pop and imagery needs to pop, or at least not be this strange Cheshire cat thing."

"A what kind of cat?" Weasel said.

"Cheshire. A Cheshire cat, like in Alice in Wonderland."

"Oh, I've never seen that."

Rabbit looked at him, mouth open. "Regardless of having seen it or not, or even better, having read the book, since you are trying to be a writer, you...

"Carry the wreath, Henry, your mother is waiting."

Father's terse words spoken from the side of his mouth, muffled by his coat's collar and the stub of a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He fancied himself a small-town Bogart. He was the only one.

Two days past christmas and we're out before dawn, getting decorations.

"For next year. Don't worry about it," he says, pulling the flask from the inside pocket. "Carry it another few blocks and maybe I'll give you a sip."

He drinks and staggers and coughs. The butt falls from his mouth and I crush...

I found the small book when we had to pack Grandpa's things so he could move out of that old house, and into an old people's apartment building. Mom said it would be better for him there, people could watch him and take care of him. Better care than she could, she said.

I said I could do it, but she said I had to go to school, and I never even walked the dog before he went to live on that farm we see on the side of the highway between our house and Grandpa's.So how could I expect...