AB INTRA

In some fundamental way everything I had believed, the idea that somewhere, Wally and the rest of those Jock-Nihilists were going about living their lives, having children, grandchildren, fulfilling the promise of the college to provide the world with humane executives, educators and middle-managers—all things expected of a certain class—this whole vision of normality had been based on a lie. One of us, at least, had not kept up. – Jim Krusoe

Qualities I abhor in others—self-righteous religiosity, mainstream acceptance and conformity, an unwillingness to deviate, even in the slightest, and the affectation, conceit, pretense, and concealment of a deep and limiting conventionality—I don’t mind in Vivian, and she, in turn, has accepted me, which is no small thing considering the friends and family I have already lost. I am an only child, and my parents, who are very wealthy, pay for my treatment; but despite the pleadings of my counselors, they refuse to have contact with me, which is why I refer to “family day” as “lonesome day.” – Victoria Patterson

At the end of the night we would sit in that trailer after the fair closed. Outside the carnies were drinking and fighting on the dirt paths. I am sure the stars were beautiful and the moon was full but Jesus and I, we just sat in the quiet of that trailer, never saying much and never touching a bit. We would eat some Butterfingers and just listen to each other’s breaths. Like two baby chicks – Hadley Hall Meares

I want to make love to you and then write a letter about it to the President of the United States. In a dark room, as you sleep amid the pillows and jumbled sheets of my full-size bed, I will sit in a chair quietly, looking at you for a moment, and then I will turn to face the empty white space of my computer’s monitor. I will then type, “Dear Mr. President,” and the anthropomorphic paperclip graphic who governs the Letter Wizard function of my Word Processor will emerge from the back of my screen to offer aid. – Michael Jauchen

When my mother snaps the three locks on the door shut after my father comes home from the late-night shift, and I imagine them arguing about the stolen toolboxes, the bars on the window, the hooting boys in the streets, I realize that I no longer speak their language. And the shock of that realization shakes me—that I have lost my mother tongue. Now I am fierce, foreign, sharp, and profane. I try to believe that the shapes of those old voices will console me. But I quiver beneath my blanket and know that for some things, there is no consolation. – Bright Yuan

One day I was sitting at my desk next to a window when I felt a shadow fall across my face. It was only there for a second, and I really didn’t think much of it, but then someone I worked with came into my office and told me that somebody had just jumped off my side of the building, and asked if I saw it. I told him I had, even though I had felt only the shadow, and I became so guilt-ridden about saying this that I took a long time off work, just lying around in bed trying to figure out if that dead person was angry with me for making a memory out of him that wasn’t true. – Michael J. Lee

The Monkey first introduced himself to us as a friend to lost souls, and both Cinder and I have agreed to follow him by taking a series of Monkey Vows: do everything wrong; never take a bath; smoke; sleep all day; watch TV all night; let the weeds grow; be as unattractive as possible; and most importantly, drive other people crazy. This seemed a perfect solution to the frustration of trying to be good, so Cinderella cut loose from her career as a third grade teacher and I quit my job as a librarian. – Linda Purdy

There’s a word for it. Maybe one of those big fat German words loaded with consonants that mean a whole bunch of things all tied together—but not just one thing—all those events crunching up. Like the cyclist is going to be smashed against the guardrail, or you’ll be sideswiped in your rental car if you don’t fucking decide what to do before you reach the bridge. I mean, obviously—the thing to do is slow down, and you will, probably, but there’s a word for it. – Stephanie Kerley Schwartz

Roy remembered everything; he could read or see or hear something and it stayed in his brain and when he needed to recall it, or even sometimes when he didn’t try to recall it, he could. Roy assumed it would always be this way, which was why he was curious about what the father said about being happy. Things happened and either they were good or bad and depending on what they were, a person was happy or sad. – Barry Gifford

Once he got stopped, right around here, and talked the cop out of a ticket without Mom waking up. He kept his voice low, and he and the cop decided they’d gone to school together; after that, he was off the hook. At least he convinced the cop they knew one another, or maybe the cop, wondering, what kind of jerk goes ninety with his three kids in the car, on a two-lane road, then tries to schmooze me out of a ticket… – Andrew Day

I was watching TV, a public access show about restoring sailboats. In the other room I had the radio on, a commercial program about selling manufactured houses. And in the kitchen, the dishwasher was going. I was waiting something out, pushing back a true world. I was trying to blanket some noise, wanted to be sacked by some hush of time. – Roberto Ontiveros

The cans of formula were there like they were supposed to be, but she couldn’t bring herself to reach for them. Booty, the pit bull that Rika was supposed to love was there, curled up dead and dried up so close to the formula that his rear paws rested on a can. She had no idea of why it had gone under the bed to die, but it made as much sense as anything that had happened to them lately. – Jervey Tervalon

The icons she painted, she said, were hardly her own, but something that came from God: it came through her and out onto the piece of wood. It’s not that she disappeared, exactly, while painting. She was aware of herself, but faintly. Occasionally, someone stood nearby, watching her. That presence was herself. – Anne Germanacos

That January night when war was officially declared after months of posturing and troop build-ups, Teresa cut out tiny battleships and miniature planes from black construction paper and deployed them with Glue Stick in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. She’d stayed up all night with her Exacto knife, pressing deeply into the paper until the razor hit the bread board she was using. When Lola awoke the next morning, the Persian Gulf in their living room was crowded with the American fleet. – Lisa Alvarez

When he slowly opens his eyes again an hour later he sees them—the unholy menagerie. All down the ledge, crowded near him in awkward proximity, are: a large king snake; two smaller water snakes; four fat nutria; a half-drowned feral cat and two shivering kittens; three pitiful brown rabbits; a soggy raccoon; a dozen Norwegian rats; a clot of huddled mice; along with a teeming mess of spiders, beetles, centipedes, and such. His eyes dart. Theirs do too. All seem to breathe in some strange unison. Waiting a move. Nobody is eating anybody this morning. They share the same fear and confusion—orphan brothers in the storm. – Steve De Jarnatt

The people who collect to watch us dose up in these villages look like health itself, red-cheeked and thick-limbed. Still Raj tries. European! he shouts, pointing at us. European he says, because Americans are not so healthy. They invented Coke, he says, the drink that eats nails. At one village, the monkey gets loose and we give up looking European and chase it through all the alleys that make up the place, chase it until we find it shivering at a cliff. – Terese Svoboda

Night fell. The lake and the trees whispered. The sky was clear and Anderson left the gazebo to set up his telescope. He spent very little money on himself—beyond of course the cigarettes and the beer and the gasoline—but this was an exception: it was a very large and very good telescope. He hoped to show Hanson the rings of Saturn. Hanson walked down to the lake and looked back at the gazebo; a single lamp glowed in a window. It was his “little house in the big woods.” He wondered briefly if Laura Ingalls Wilder had been good-looking. Then his thoughts grew quite somber. The little room, the darkness, the yellow light in the window, the tall trees…he was lucky to be where he was. He was lucky to be alive. He would die, and his friend would die, but they were alive now. It was incomprehensible. It was almost as ridiculous to wish ardently to be alive as it was to want despairingly to be dead. – Gary Amdahl