Alphabetical stories

Beowulf in Hell

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They strung him up, stowed on the balcony, and beat him with sticks, and beat him with rocks, and bent his muscles, …

Beowulf in Hell (in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse)

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They strung him up,…

Beowulf Is Pillow

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Now that school is back in session, we move through our days like cage fighters, tagging in and out of matches: The Battle of the Bottle, The Diaper Duel, The Pout Bout. So while I'm assembling a casserole for tomorrow, Susan feeds Margot. While she washe

Berkeley Stations

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or Hamlet,Great Denmark"No good can come out of this house of Berkeley, not ever, not to strut the great book of the world, or for any other discreet purpose." - the Upanishads "What is guile? Who is this Hamlet? Where smarts wounded Denmark? I need…

Berniece

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"I expect 50% of the agreed fee. In cash.” I dropped the envelope at the designated spot and parked up the street.

Bert & Ernie: The Pre Nup

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BERT AND ERNIE -- THE PRE NUPBy Roz Warren and Janet GoldenInspired by a recent Supreme Court decision, Bert and Ernie are finally going to tie the knot! Their just signed pre-nup was leaked to us by a Muppet whose identity we've promised not to reveal, in…

Berthier Door

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On Day 1122 at 4:14 AM the door which has remained since installation firmly glued to the masonry behind opens and a man emerges blinking shielding his eyes against fine stinging snow.

Berto and Cosi

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Berto had come to live with me a month earlier. He’d been cursed by being the favored child of our parents. Their indulgence resulted in a 40 year old man and heroin addict from age 17 and all that accompanies such an existence such as thievery, larcen

Beside Dripping Glaciers

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We slept beside dripping glaciers people like us We were never meant to be housed contained, kept, petted, cleaned We could only be gutted You used us one time and threw us out people like us We sprouted the wings of desire by watchi

Beside the Pool at Noon

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he flies away past the green explosion, into the azure sky

Beside the Still Waters

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“You. There,” said the fellow, pointing his gun like a dead finger. “You believe that water saves the soul, don’t you?” Thomas looked to the other boys for an answer, but they didn’t know any more than he did.

Beside the Swing Set

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Julie had a thousand freckles the color of mud.

Best

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Two thousand and two was the worst year for love in the history of sports. People carried their sadness around in wheelbarrows.

Best Before....

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There is a great deal of hard-edge painted on eyeliner gadding about. Often it is teamed with platinum blonde hair that is edging toward the purple-grey discount home bleaching kit shades, and single-hair width eyebrows, but once it was THE look and we kn

Best blurb (pitch) -- and thanks, Sally and Prickly

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The author's note explains...

Best Laid Plans

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My obituary wasn't in the morning paper, so I headed to Target.

Best Left Unsaid: intro and ch.01

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“Evil is not always clothed in scales and horns,” the son frowns, “but it does wear a most unfashionable hat. To continue, what do I offer as collateral? My soul? Or is that too heavily mortgaged already?” The devil named his terms, congratulating

Best Left Unsaid: ch.02-03

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Charles Faulkner, the room's original occupant, blearily looks up from his scribbles, mumbles an unenthusiastic greeting to the intruder, and forthwith resumes his profound meditations in the realm of napping.

Best Place To Eat in Town

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Often I eat lunch at the hospital. The cafeteria may be the best place to eat in town.

Bestiary

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A woman posted a story on Fictionaut about discovering that her husband was a werewolf.

Bethlehem

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I dragged you that last half mile Me such a slip of a thing, one bite mark visible You the bear, your growl now only audible When you furred from kerb to road to kerb The December snow followed us Dragging Christmas red behind you As I ignored my…

Betrayal

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Betrayal of course is the great human crime. As I found out when . . . .

Betrayal

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My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the

Betsy

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Lester walked back into the house. He was hungry but didn’t know what he wanted to eat. Really, he couldn’t remember how to fix anything he wanted. He walked over to turn on the television, but couldn’t find the on/off button. Surely the damn thing had an

Better

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... all my friends are girls; I like opera; I can answer all the questions about male and female ejaculation – without stammering – in sex ed. classes. And Braydon? In boardshorts, tall and tanned and naked from the waist up ...

Better

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My father-in-law is drunk. This is something only my husband and I know: the old man does not stagger or flail, he is not vacant; neither too-friendly nor hostile to the woman who shows us to a table and sets down three bundles of silverware wrapped in paper…

Better Alive Than Dead

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How many of them, I'm wondering, are just going through the motions until the power goes out and never comes back on again? They've got to know the Americans will never let the city fall to the færies.

Better Boys, Early Girls

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... tomatoes swelling and turning pink...

Better Days

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I peeled off a hundred. For the screwdriver, I said. The kid shook his head, made a pushing-away gesture. You need it worse’n I do right now, he said.

Better Off In My Head

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The morning news. The birthday present you bought me. This poem. My hair when I wake up in the morning, at any given point in the day. Pigeon pose. My singing voice. How much I love myself. Coffee. Sex. Not having sex. Having movie star sex. Ha