An autistic girl called Jack tends to a mysterious plant growing in her back garden to try and escape from a memory she can't bring herself to voice. Image generated with OpenAI There's a new plant in the garden. New as in no one planted it, no one's put anything there since Grandma died. Her roses have all withered, her lilacs choked with weeds, flower petals rotting into the dirt like little girls' skins. The rabbits sneak in from the woods and pick over the carnage until Dad chases them away, shouting and waving his arms. But there's a new plant in the garden. Jack can see it po ..read more

Jeremy Astor becomes obsessed with making the high school basketball team, but at what cost? Image generated with OpenAI Jeremy "Automatic" Astor stood at the free throw line. Two shots were forthcoming; two points would win the game. Even so, it was not the orange lip of the rim that was the focus of his attention. Nor was it the 400 chanting fans. Rather, Jeremy was attempting to calculate the odds of a game ending on a technical foul; and then the further odds that the resulting foul shots should determine the outcome of that game; and then the odds that the game in question shoul ..read more

A sorrowful man shares his surreal recurring vision of the Blue Country. Image generated with OpenAI I sit beside sorrow heading crosstown, eyes searching for the address through iridescent drops that pelt the windshield. I depart the bus and climb the steps of a brownstone. A woman answers the door. She wears a black, avian print dress that conforms to her svelte body. Where have I seen her before? Perhaps she is the doctor, as she extends her hand in cordial expectation. Her pale skin is warm and soft, her scent pleasant, like delicate incense. Her wedding band is simple but elegan ..read more

Having fallen from grace into a life of addiction and petty criminality, Devin Franks falls hard for fellow crook Angel Bradford - and gets accused of a violent murder. Image generated with OpenAI Found The lump in his pocket was an antique pendant, and it shimmered brightly when the police officer pulled it from the pocket of his jeans. A tiny silver pocketbook with a tarnished chain. Linked together with a paper clip. "That's all I got left from my Momma. She been dead four years now..." His lips were ashy, his speech was slurred. His face was bruised and swollen. Along with the ..read more

Isabela has always struggled to fit in with her family, but things come to a head when she discovers a skeleton among her father's possessions.  Image generated with OpenAI Three years after moving into her father's home in Asunción, Isabela found the skeleton in his closet. The wooden crate containing the bones had been lying in the same spot since she began her caretaking duties, and yet she had never thought to open it. The crate looked so innocent from the outside, hidden under an assortment of lone socks missing their other half, with no lock to suggest clandestine contents ..read more

Old man Leonard loves his ageing and confused wife, but wonders how much longer he can look after her. Image generated with OpenAI At seventy-eight, Leonard discovers that fork split is just a marketing descriptor, not instructions. All the forks are in the dishwasher so he pries the muffin halves apart with a butter knife, and neither nook nor cranny appear worse for wear under such treatment. So he toasts and butters her muffin, peels her hardboiled egg, squeezes the juice of one lemon into her tea, and idly wonders if Xanax would dissolve in a cup of hot Lipton's - and, if so, how ..read more

A woman attends the funeral of her former best friend, having fallen out with her forty years ago because of her brother's bad behaviour. Image generated with OpenAI On a cold, clear November night in a cabin on a marijuana farm in eastern Colorado an aging propane heater malfunctioned, and Tracy, her current partner, and their dogs died in their sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning. They were discovered the next day by a couple of transient kids who'd been working for them. "She went peacefully," Lena told her college friend Deb over the phone from her bakery in Annapolis. Tracy's b ..read more

A divorced couple regularly prepare dinner for their daughter and her fellow convalescents in rehab, but Chicken Marsala might not be enough to heal their wounds.  Image generated with OpenAI Giovanni, my ex, is driving us to Patagonia for the eighth Sunday in a row, a meal for the residents in tow. Of late, our Sunday routine is shaped around visiting hours at New Beginnings, bringing dinner to the twelve women living there, who themselves are in various stages of recovery, our daughter Lucia being one of them. Today, it's Chicken Marsala. On the side are roasted potatoes with ..read more

Having navigated college through a haze of reefer smoke, David swears off the pot - until it becomes legal.  Image generated with OpenAI David lives in Massachusetts, born and raised. "Where It All Began," as the saying goes, a state whose origin story is about a mob of cheap shits who didn't want to spend more for their tea. This attitude has evolved over the generations into a bedrock orneriness, steeped in the conviction that everyone not from there? Is an idiot. This helps to create the impression that the state is rife with arrogant and unfriendly pricks. Massholes. The vi ..read more

A lonely man tries to reconnect with a stranger he encountered four decades ago. Image generated with OpenAI It was over forty years ago. I was hitch-hiking and he gave me a lift from the ring-road south of Edinburgh to York. He - whoever he was - was driving to his home in Orpington, which was then in Kent. He was making the return journey, having followed a girlfriend to Edinburgh who had told him she didn't want anything more to do with him. He was there one day, back the next. I wouldn't have remembered the lift but for that detail. At that time, in my mid to late-teens, I was i ..read more