I calculated as my hair fanned across the scorched, crumbly asphalt: 5.5 pineapple vodkas since 12:13pm, four in the privacy of my kitchen, one and a half since I had been out in the sun, and a beer. I was a […]

Everett’s mother sobbed loudly as he stepped onto his front porch and let the storm door crash against the house. He had to get out of that house, though. It was all full of church people and casseroles. The n […]

I first met Kristen-Paige Madonia two years ago. Her writing is forthright and honest. It is this earnestness that stands out the most, employed to great effect as a penetrating light to plumb the depths of her […]

Jessie had worked at Meyers Auditorium for six years, by then. When she had started during her fourth year in college (it took five to finish her social sciences degree), she hadn’t planned to stay that long. It h […]

“Mommy, do trees grow up out of the ground,” Waffles says, “or do they grow from the top up?”

“I don’t know,” Isabelle says to her daughter. Then Isabelle takes a stab in the dark and says, “From the top […]

A couple of weeks ago I discovered the original “Twilight Zone” series was available on Netflix Instant. Needless to say I have (happily) surrendered hours of my life re-watching this classic series, which I […]

Taken at face value, writing is a bit of an odd enterprise: Writers work alone, spending inordinate amounts of time and energy on something with absolutely no guarantee of success. In fact, the whole endeavor s […]

It was November when the turkeys came to Ridge Hill Road. Before that, there was nothing remarkable about it—just a few shingled houses that squiggled through the scrub oaks like a dropped thread. All of the p […]

About midnight out of nowhere Pete’s best friend Eddie hauled up out of his chair like a zombie back from the grave, sprinted naked across the lawn, and hurtled himself in cannonball into the middle of the s […]