
FREE SHORT STORIES
ADDITIONAL REQUIRED READINGS
WATCH
People.
Watching.
I stare across the campus lawn at the bookstore. The window wall reflects a pathetic goodbye between a mother and son framed like a movie set. Freshmen move across the street to the bus stop absorbed in headphones that make a musical from the mundane. A woman in black smokes at the corner also watching the sitcom of silence like a detail.
No laugh track. No applause sign. No obvious audience.

THE RUSH
Stop. Record.
“You’ll never—” he coughed, “—never get away.”
The trench filled as the torrent poured over the ridge. The surge overwhelmed the levee. It flowed into the dry cracks of the surface using them as tributaries. The thin streams of blood formed a red bead at the curved tip of the horizon.
It hung there for a moment from my finger. It waited before falling onto the carpet. Then, another followed.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
No need to rush.