Inconvenient? Definitely. At least compared to the day routine. They pay parking (everyone got vouchers), and commuting on the train was still cheaper than the pittance paid as a day rate. Beat sitting in morning traffic to downtown, too. Coffee’s good. There’s that. And hey, a day away from the office and his petty tyrant of a boss.

Caro started up the giant fan on the back and took off into the viscous afternoon. They sped down winding waterways, the long tall grasses going for miles to the horizon, punctuated by chubby mangroves. They went 30 minutes without speaking. Then Caro cut the engine as they pulled into a lagoon.

Her hands gripped hard to the textured plastic of the airline seats. The airplane moved forward, slowly, towards the runway. No way to tell how close they were.

“You could still try to make a scene,” Chloe offered. “Get kicked off, maybe.”

Shannon shook her head. “I’ll see it through.”

Finally, his angel broke the kiss and pulled away from him. He opened his eyes and screamed noiselessly. Bubbles rose from his mouth as he realized it wasn’t wind, but water rushing past him. He had to calm down before he drowned.

It begins with a colossal UFO in the sky. Next, a Swedish big box store suddenly vanishes. Poof. Into thin air. It’s hard to believe. "Fake news," exclaim millions, as they settle in for another evening with Hannity.

The principal challenge of human shadowing, the challenge that separates the great from the good, is that human shadows are not allowed to follow the movements of their assigned people, called their “principals”. Rather, human shadows are required to anticipate, to fore-shadow, their principals’ movements. This skill is reputed to be the most difficult to attain among all inanimates, yet evolution has lofted the shadow community into such an advanced state that an estimated ten percent have the ability to foreshadow.

Mother says, I’m going to hell.

Daughter says, There’s no such thing.

Mother screams, There’s no such thing? Well, then you’re an atheist! I was right!

“So, you’re the best friend,” the boyfriend says, sliding his arm around the back of Ellie’s chair. I briefly consider how quickly I might grab my steak knife and sever the digits of his right hand now making tiny circles on her shoulder.

Jonathan doesn’t respond to the employee. Through the box, he begins to blindly mash the buttons on the machine. His second hand sails through the cardboard and grips the joystick. He swings it violently, still blind to the screen.

Arachne knew that history was a tale told by the victors and human relationships and choices were far too complex to follow a logical line from one act to the next. The very fact she was sitting at a table loom in a single bedroom shack on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi with her father knocking at death’s door and her mother trying to keep the door shut on the other side was proof enough of the complexity of the fickle machine of causality.

It was as sweet and fleeting as those cherry cones. Only both of them had horizons to chase, and so much sugar dulled the senses, made truth harder to savor. Did Kate honestly bask in their banter; were they joking with the same flavor?

took him in from a narrow window of pudgy arms and a cloud of B.O. As he tracked towards me, his expression was stiff, desolate, his movement unnaturally smooth, as if he was suspended in some metaphysical expanse, unhindered by the friction of the boardwalk. We made eye contact, and it was as if I was just another face in the crowd: a cagey California blonde, a Parisian bon vivant, a stoned high schooler in search of a good time — anybody but his daughter.

By the time I get down to the basement, Jimmy and Kenny are already playing a new Sonic the Hedgehog game I’ve never seen before. Since I don’t remember buying it, and since my son doesn’t have any way to purchase it himself, that only leaves Kenny. But where he got the money is just as much of a mystery. It’s been four months since Kenny got fired from his baker’s job at Value King, and he hasn’t worked a day in that time.

The father had trudged up the small hill with a cooler full of Stag beers that he had planned to open once the station wagon was free of fishing tackle and beat up plaid suitcases. The girl had walked up the wooden uneven planks paying attention to the ground, so she could avoid snakes. Last year a corn snake had slithered across her toes. The mother slowed her steps when she saw it.

It was ten miles to the next town. This was my regular migration north and I was familiar with the alley behind Burton Diner. If there were no rides I would arrive in the dead of night so I could fish through the dumpster without interference. Veteran’s Park of Sawyer offered a smattering of trees, beneath which I could sleep incognito until dawn.

Duncan surveyed the Brown Brothers’ Butchers and its weathered, white stone walls. Its roof seemed askew, like bursting from the inside. With pills, he imagined. He thought of the medicine that might fill a butcher shop. Warfarin, maybe. Lasix. Cherry flavored Rolaids.

Still, Viv enjoyed the fashion show around her. One person walked by in rhinestone gold shoes with soles thicker than the longest Ken Follet book she’d ever read; she wondered if it was hard to keep your balance in those things.

Our eyes met, and I believed this was going to be the moment. As I moved to kiss her, I saw four guys on bicycles speeding towards us. The collective charge of bikes with their rattling frames, squealing chains, and grinding pedals got my attention first, as they jumped the street curb onto the sidewalk.

A line of ants crossed the northwestern edge of her square at exactly 10:46am, and Alex worked herself into an anxiety wondering whether or not she should write it down. In the end, she decided that she’d better. They appeared to have found a bag of potato chips, and were carrying the pieces home, pieces of all sizes, still oily enough to catch the sun, which meant they were likely only recently lost.