Fiction

I once mistook loving a story for loving a person.

At night she would try to dig her way out, and I would pull my stitches tighter, snipping off the tips of her fingers. 

Fiction is a more subtle and sophisticated revenge porn.

They were no longer comrades, but post-conflict combatants. The war is over, he said, a phrase he would keep repeating throughout the day without emotion. It’s over.

Today I heard five Shakespearean insults walking along the corridor, and if I hear one more, it will be a good day, an even day.

On this morning, at this place, the prevailing wind is from the west. Given the location of the site, the air we breathe right now will reach the city in an hour or two. When it arrives in the city it will seem like a mystery, an affliction.

Random was what life did best, Bea thought. It conferred cancer on the virtuous, drunk drivers on the unsuspecting, it matched noble wives to unfinished men, wickedness to wealth, weakness to power.

Beck didn’t believe in an afterlife, but he was starting to think that this was what people meant by ghosts. There was something there, he craned his mind toward it: something about ghosts. 

You know, Lady, I ain’t trying to start nothing, but a bunch of people’s saying you’re the best thing breathing.