The research assistant held in her lap a cigar box. She said they were studying tickles. Of course we were suspicious. The ad in the paper had said nothing about tickles; the ad had said the purpose of the experiment was to “fine-tune the human sensory apparatus and challenge widely accepted notions of the real.” Fifty bucks for a one-hour session. We had thought, Sweet . We had practically skipped all the way to the university. I said dinner tonight was on me. But now we wer

The helicoptering seeds that fell from the trees were slicing people up real good. Real good. That was our first clue. There would be many more clues to come, but as far as clues go, that first one was a doozy. The messages written on the leaves, spelled out in faint branching vesicles, were almost unnecessary, redundant, superfluous. WE’RE GONNA SLICE YOU ALL UP REAL GOOD, one of them read. Well, yeah. Message already received, you mighty, murderous oak or elm or maple. I p

I had a dream that something big would happen after Frederick, though I knew not what. I know, I know: the formality of the phrase I knew not what might make it seem as though I wasn’t juggling at the time, but I was. I was juggling. Check this shit out, I said, to each person who entered the rumpus room. Simon, Alice, Moonshot, Fennel Seed, Dougie. They all came in, one b’one. I was juggling eggs. I’d hard-boiled them, which is a form of cheating in juggling circles. Hard-b

Evelyn tasted one of my biscuits. Delicious, she said. Buttery. Flaky. Just flat-out wonderful. Evelyn was one of the judges on the cooking show I was currently competing on. It wasn’t one of the big cooking shows. You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones with the famous faces from the culinary world and impressive production values. The show I was on was called “This Is Not a Cooking Competition Show,” but it was a cooking competition show. It was exactly that. I once

When she was young and lithe, she often mixed them up. But now, confined to a bed in a nursing home near Chicago, she recalls them with crystal clarity. Stalagmites are the ones that extend up. Stalactites are the ones that hang down. Caves have a smell. They leave a taste on the tongue. They prickle the skin, that cool dank air. The scream of bats and skitter of rats. Has she jumped or a chasm or two? Or two thousand? Oh god yes, she has. In her mind’s eye, she can see herse

Ed sure was proud of his woodpile. There she is, said Ed, pointing. That’s my woodpile. I gazed upon Ed’s woodpile. I whistled, the kind of whistle that starts off high and goes low. If my whistling impressed Ed, he didn’t show it. I took in the gnarly grandeur of Ed’s woodpile. It was a fine woodpile; I wasn’t afraid to admit as much. A tall and rugged woodpile. A proud woodpile. A noble woodpile. This was a woodpile that wasn’t ashamed to be exactly what it was: a gigantic

Steve was offered a camp counselor job at the Summer Camp for Mean Little Shits. The pay was decent. The camp was located just ten minutes from his apartment. Meals would be provided. Yet he hesitated before accepting. That’s an interesting offer, he said to the camp director over the phone. The offer won’t last forever, said the director. I’ll need a decision by the end of the day. Wow, that’s fast, said Steve. We have a fresh batch of mean little shits coming in on Friday,

I’d seen the old fisherman around the wharf but never talked with him. Then one afternoon while sitting at the bar he began telling me about the time his trawler was taken down by a great and terrible sea monster. I watched his thin chapped lips move, observed the darting of his rheumy eyes. I felt lucky to be confided in. When someone who is grizzled and rheumy confides in you, it feels special, like you’ve been selected, even if the reasons for your selection are foggy. I w

Doug kept making a strident errrrt sound every time he stopped by Alice’s cubicle to deliver a message. It was like, Errrrrt! Hey, Alice, did Megan already talk to you about the new project? Errrrrt! Alice, do you need anything from the supply closet? Errrrrt! Alice, would you like a raspberry scone? Doug did this every day, several times a day. Could Alice live with Doug’s grating mouth noises? Probably. But this habit of Doug’s was really starting to get under her skin.

Here, said Jim, pointing pipeward. It all goes in here. Jim was pointing at a very large metal pipe in our town’s water treatment plant. It was by far the largest pipe in a room full of large pipes. He rapped the side of it with his knuckles, and the low sound reverberated throughout the cavernous, pipe-filled space. Now that’s a pipe, said Jim, rapping it again. Now that’s a goddamn pipe. But then where does it go? I asked. What now? said Jim. Where does all the sadness go

Agnes was practicing her calligraphy. I said it was strange to do so considering all the alien spaceships in the sky. Agnes said, What are we supposed to do? Cry about it? I said, Well, no, but widespread panic might be in order. I pointed out the window. See? I said. See how they run? Maybe we should be out there running, too. Yeah, said Agnes, but where to? Where do those people think they’re going? Agnes made a very handsome curlicue with her fountain pen. I had to admit s

If you enroll in the “Learn How to Pretend to Know How to Play Guitar” class at the YMCA and, in the process, actually learn a thing or two about how to play guitar, the instructor will get very cross with you. OK, shit, that’s not what this class is about, they will say. Look, hotshot, do you want to learn how to play guitar? Like, for real? Do you really want to learn? If so, Brian Carrava’s “Learn How to Actually Play Guitar” class is right down the goddamn hall. Right

It was the building of a button factory that begat all the rest. That was back in, oh, aught-nine, I believe. Soon after the button factory went online, a zipper factory cropped up, followed by a belt factory. A rubber band factory was not so far behind. The production of velcro and twist ties ramped up accordingly. A factory that made both staples and pushpins was soon erected on the outskirts of town. Next, in rapid succession, were machines that made cuff links, laces, lat

She became known as the painting astronaut. When in space, she would paint the Earth and sometimes the moon. The media was fascinated with her. What do you think the painting astronaut is up to right now, Lydia? they would say on our favorite morning news show. Well, let’s take a peek inside the capsule and find out, Paul. My bet is she’s painting! The painting astronaut had an easel and a canvas set up in the cockpit. A palette. All her paints. A smock as well as a replaceme

Today at work it was How Many to Overwhelm Day. I made sure to stretch and to not weigh myself down with too many pancakes. The idea behind How Many to Overwhelm Day was that through a series of simulated (in quotes) fisticuffs, the minimum number of attackers required to overwhelm each employee was determined. The resulting HMtO values would, in turn, be used to create an employee seating chart that would offer the most robust defense against multiple attackers. For instance

Sam looked at the app store and felt sick. There were so many apps. Every app had already been made. There were no more apps to make. Some of Sam’s friends had gotten rich off the apps they’d made, and millions of other people rushed in to make their own apps. The app space had become fully saturated. Now there were apps that made other apps. There were even apps that made apps that made other apps, as stupid as that sounds. And much of it was very stupid. Now AI was making

This is what it felt like to walk among the trees, a light breeze blowing through your hair, they said. They gathered around Sam, whose suit was ill-fitting but presentable. Some of them stood stock-still, arms out at a variety of jaunty angles, their many fingers splayed. They were the trees. They were weeping and they were tall and mighty and they were the trees. Were they arboreal? Yes. Others moved close to Sam, very close. They positioned themselves so that they were nea

Paul had an idea for a new art installation called “Man Perpetually Falling Down Stairs.” He’d come up with the concept last Tuesday when...

Three little pigs lived by the sea. You know how this goes. The first little pig built its house of lumber. The second little pig built...

Whenever the bluebird of befuddlement lit upon our little backyard feeder, we found ourselves without much in the way of coherent speech....