Short Stories

“You’re lucky kid. This dog is too beautiful to kill, too stupid to train. Just wants to play. All the fucking time. Play play play. Don’t you boy?” The sergeant tries to pet Zero but stops short given the spectacle of affection before him.

This was solitary confinement. The forest’s grandeur highlighted the deprivation. Weeks might pass before their next human interaction. No stranger would cause them to blush. Xlin had abandoned humanity, that shimmering, belittling mass of bait fish, to swim in the open ocean.

“Is potty humor allowed?” Vagish asks.
“As long as you are not referring to the mutual need to relieve yourself.”
“So ‘no shit’ or ‘shit happens’ or ‘I don’t give a shit,’ totally fine?” Vagish asks.
“Yes.”
“But ‘I’ve got a turtle head poking out,’ that’s a no-go?”
“Correct.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not trying to get back together.” Binana places the talisman on the table. It is round and smooth, about the size of a golf ball with a flattened underside and a reddish-brown stain to the wood, probably walnut.
“What is it”? Cobin asks.
“A good luck charm and Pandora’s Box, all in one.”

A short story about single moms, summer evenings at the pool, and a pair of unusual crows.