A New Kind of Literary Pulse

There's a painting at the Chicago Institute of Art by Gustave Caillebotte titled Paris Street; Rainy Day. I used to go and look at it every Thursday. Thursday, because that's the day with the fewest ... [+]

"Three of hearts," the demon says. He's lounging on Joseph's bed, deck of cards in his hands and shirt riding up over his stomach. He glances up, fangs flashing in a bright grin as if he can feel ... [+]

My friend used to ride the midnight bus so he could spend time with his dead sister.He had been doing this for about five years, right after she was killed. Her boyfriend shot her one night ove ... [+]

It was the splatter of liquid on my face that woke me. Shitty-quality beer, with a taste of loam. Awareness returned as it puddled beneath me, where the tree roots grew against my back. Feet on the ... [+]

When I was a kid, I was very nervous about what I would be when I grew up. It honestly consumed me. I was constantly trying new things so I could see what felt right. At seven years old, I begged my ... [+]

The sun struck my eyes as I rubbed the sleep off them. I stretched and yawned and felt the air. The little hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight. I couldn't help but smile because deep inside ... [+]

Bellatrix Sakakino worked for a commercial bank, focusing on securities valuation and research, and nobody liked her. This was because of her tints and hues. The colors emanating from her person were ... [+]

He couldn't say exactly when it fell off, was sometime during the night when he was asleep. But when he woke up in the morning, the ring finger of his left hand was off, tucked underneath the pillow ... [+]

Maria had never been in love. But when she first saw a tiny sprout push its way through the tile floor, she felt something tighten inside her belly. She sat in her father's wooden rocking chair, his ... [+]

Joey Button didn't know how long he'd been peddling his bike when he saw it, but whenever he'd recall the moment, he'd remember that his legs were tired, so it'd probably been a while. It didn't ... [+]

Long ago, an incorporeal god of light named Belgrin flew over the face of the earth searching for new and interesting objects to illuminate. When he found a young woman named Isil, he stopped. He was ... [+]

I saw them once, when I was little. Maybe age four or five. The tree on the other side of the fence had branches stretching over our garden. It was too tall for me to reach the succulent, juicy plums ... [+]

Billy got in touch. We must meet and soon. I have a secret to reveal that only you can understand – a true exquis. As if we hadn't lost touch years ago. The charge of his excitement ran through ... [+]

It was one of those thunderstorms came on sudden-like. Before a body could cover its head it had passed on someplace else. Here, in our holler, we were used to such storms. We liked the surprise of ... [+]

We're always asking for too much in this office. First it was raspberries. Now it is kiwis. The kiwis roll around on the table in our office kitchen then rot. At work, I sit on the second floor of a ... [+]

When we awoke, we found a great curtain of linked metal rungs had been lowered to earth from the sky. The chain mail drape connected land and sky and ran as far the eye could see, across the ocean in ... [+]

A witch wind was howling out in the desert. I was praying for a storm to scour Coaling Depot 6 down to the ground, wipe it right off the Arizona Territory map. Apart from prayer, I still had a shot at ... [+]

For all his life, Frank had been at war with the willows. They sprouted in and around the stream, clogged the irrigation ditches, and choked off the water flow.  His land, a narrow plain between ... [+]

Randall stood before his bathroom mirror – gazing at the enormous, glistening dome that was his head. Creams, lotions, infused oils, battery-powered skull caps; he had deployed them all in his ... [+]

My husband's nose changed first—a nearly imperceptible spot-the-difference puzzle on a face I'd known for twenty-two years. Through our kitchen's bay windows, the morning sunlight highlighted his ... [+]