I dreamt that Vikings sacked and pillaged,
razed to coals a conquered village

I dreamt that Vikings sacked and pillaged,
razed to coals a conquered village

My parents were an interesting pair. Mother, who we later referred to as “Sherrie” or “Ma,” was a Jewish American art therapist. Nothing boxy like “Mom” could ever suit her.

Miss Helena Orobos of Upingly was considered the finest badminton player in the county. She had her shuttlecocks made specifically by Feerer’s and Sons of Lower Palliton Falls.

If you come over you'll find we're fierce friends. Like bottles and knives we're eminently useful but have sharp edges.

First there was the building of the sets, but he enjoyed that part of the labor, transforming the many rooms of his Victorian home into living narratives with lumber, paint, and scrap metal.

Professor Tinderbrooks’ Hauntingly Horrific Extravaganza (featuring Mordecai the Ghost) begins each night when the stage lights dim bit-by-bit. On this particular evening, the heightened murmurings of the audience dims alongside the lights.

There once was an aardvark demure

He crept through dusky crepuscular

For his task was to visit

Sir Necrotic Despot

And deliver a much-needed cure

It was not until Augustus sat down to play the piano that he finally realized he could no longer feel anything. And that did not surprise him. 

The first time they set up the Ouija board it takes the girls about an hour to realize they have to actually ask me a question. “Here goes nothing,” they say, and nothing is right. They sit with the board between them for awhile until one of them gets my hint.  

The mouth of the bass kept opening and closing against the paper, even with the sides cut out and the organs smeared. It didn’t bother her, of course, it never did, but the maiden frowned at it anyway. 

Ramuli lay spread out on the floor of an oak planked living room. The room was bare around him, empty of all things, as was the rest of his home. He felt long, thin pinches down his bare back where the floorboards, old and warped, spread apart and left gaps, some as wide as a human finger.

A man got on a city bus and said, “Regis Toomey.” The bus was not crowded and was a nice bus, not one of those articulated freight haulers.