Short Stories

The Real Heroic Thing by Alex Luft

This will be fun, Mom said and drank whiskey from a coffee mug in the front seat of our 1992

The retarded man upstairs, he’s overrunning the bathtub again. The fourth or fifth time this week. The ceiling is caving

Dad’s finally lost it. He’s been crying a lot lately, and drinking. And wearing his pajamas everywhere. Pajamas at the

A wall of two-by-fours fell on Jimmy’s head and rendered him peculiar. Steve, Garth and I jumped into action and

The orange fish darted in and out of the castle. Callie watched them and counted back from one hundred, a

I remember the red house, the one at the end of my old cul-de-sac, with the gray dodge in the

As Alberta Ford is strapped to the gurney, she thinks of Anthony, her husband, huddled in his truck on this

Listen to a reading of “plans to be loved” by Melissa Ann Chadburn.

My mom and I lived alone with

Jill’s back. She’s taken to wearing floral-print sundresses again, short enough to show the scars on her seventy-year-old legs. Man-o-war

Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. There were the roses. And the guests. And a rainstorm drove them all away.