By Jessica Ramer

Larry Rattner once posed as Ken Follett to prank an aspiring writer into believing the great author would help him get his book published, and then bragged to my mother and me about his practical joke. When a neighborhood couple separated, he insisted that the husband had murdered his wife, Millie, and buried her body in the flowerbed. Millie reappeared a month later, and the couple lived together until her death from uterine cancer. 

[Read more…] about Love My Neighbor?

By Barry Yedvobnick

I crawl quietly out of the tent, allowing Matty to remain asleep. The air outside is cool, perfect for some exercise. Reaching skyward, I see the sun’s first rays dissipating mist around the awesome oaks and pines. I love morning in these woods, especially with my son. He turned twenty-one, and we finally squeezed in some camping. How could so many years slip? The last time we slept together in a tent, he was six years younger and six inches shorter. He now towers over me, and these times won’t come any easier. He’ll have his own family and camp with them.

[Read more…] about Trash Time

By John Adinolfi

I been looking for Bobby all night. Now, I keep watch from the shadows of a decaying brick apartment building across from his place. My dingy white T-shirt clings like a damp dishrag in the late-August heat. I hear the ballgame on a radio from an open window above me—Mantle and Maris are chasing the Babe’s record. But baseball don’t matter right now. What does, is what I see under the flickering yellow glow of the street lamp. Bobby is squeezing Rosie tight. She ain’t objecting. I close my eyes when he kisses her. It’s not like I never seen a guy kiss a girl before, but this is my best buddy and Rosie. Any man would dream to be with her, even me. But everybody knows Rosie is Big Mike’s girl.

[Read more…] about The Kid

By Kenneth

The seagulls are in from the pristine lakeshore to feed off trash in the Costco parking lot. I follow a BMW SUV that spews emissions into the atmosphere. I fight other shoppers for a parking space. After a few minutes, I find a spot near the entrance, which gives me a false sense of accomplishment, like when my stepson hits the leaderboard on the video games he plays all Saturday afternoon.

[Read more…] about Like a Stone

By Nicholas Katsanis

Mae had promised the monsoon would blow over before his birthday. Yet six days past turning ten, Panit was still squatting on the floor, tapping his fingers to the rhythm of unrelenting raindrops.

He tracked Mae’s stomp to the kitchen, bucket in hand, apron fastened tighter than usual. She wasn’t mad at him. The ceiling crack still leaked with the persistence of a burrowing beetle. She aimed the bucket at the drip and cursed the landlord, Mr. Chammali, and his repeated vows to patch the seam.

[Read more…] about Paper Boats

By Martin Murray

We all called it “The Pit.” It was a giant hole. An open abyss in the woods behind Jeremy’s house. We threw anything we could find into it: sticks, rocks, cinder blocks.

At the end of every school semester, we’d empty our backpacks. All our homework, pencils, and books, the white pages fluttering silent into the darkness.

[Read more…] about The Pit in the Woods