I asked where they were going and they told me Los Angeles.  When I asked what was in Los Angeles, the girl just looked at me and said, “The whole world, man.”

As we pulled out of the parking lot, the stranger who read me the mail told me how proud she was my achievement(s), but all I could think about was the game of FIFA I wanted to play when I got home.

The thing smelled the way copper smells when it’s gently heated.  The top of it crackled, the ketchup my father had slathered on now bitter and burned. 

Mercury always seems to be in retrograde, I think.

I used to date this girl who was absolutely convinced I was a spy. 

The street’s antebellum homes sported massive Roman columns and wide windows that looked out on their peaceful street.  Large steel gates surrounded the complexes and their faultless lawns were always green, even in the crisp winter months.

Abby took the middle seat of the futon and watched a cockroach crawl up the far wall, just above her bed.  She thought about going to kill it, but realized more cockroaches would inevitably come and there would be little use. 

Every Monday I always ask my boss how her weekend was. It’s not that I care, it’s just something I say.

“Is this Roger Donnell?”

While walking through downtown I saw a toy factory and a soup kitchen engulfed in flames. 

I’d mopped the second and third floor corridors before I remembered the body still in the trunk of my Hyundai.

I think it was when I found the duffel of money and the open parachute bag that I realized my grandfather was D.B. Cooper. 

Even before she sat down, Harry and Tom wondered if they had all met some place before.

Did you hear that creaking and a cracking above my bed?  Did you hear the vibrations along the beams?  The fluctuations within the walls?  Did you?

It was bitter that day.  I remember the air tasted of soot and aluminum, the way my tongue feels before I’m ready to vomit.

Before my mother died and my father turned drunk, the two of them used to take my brother, Brian, and me to a battered little cabin along the banks of a meandering Minnesota creek.

It always ended at the Vegas Lounge. 

The outlines became more pronounced and the tall man no longer needed to squint.  He could see the wolves just fine.