Her mother had been instructed to wait in the lobby, but had slipped in while Lucy was taking the test to determine how normal or abnormal she was.
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The audience members are on their feet, applauding with categorical enthusiasm.
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‘Shona Doesn’t Do Kids’ speaks of childlessness and office life. Quote: ‘Jade launches into a graphic account of her labour. The postman turns pale, hands back the baby..’
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Immerse yourself in these beautiful stories from our emerging writers who have been nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers competition!
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I know that my husband never knew anyone like Gretel or Hansel. His life was just different to mine, that’s all.
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Sooner or later, everyone has to hear their voice for the first time.
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Stream it or skip it? Stream it!
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When he woke, the house was still and flat. Like a sheet of paper.
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I call you again and hear nothing back. I cross through swirling motes caught in greenish rays, over the carpet that I swear squelches under my shoes, towards the bedrooms ...
On my doorstep a package. On the package no name but I’m pretty sure it’s from my mom even though she died 10 years ago today.
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If I call you, you’ll say, hello, I’ll say, hi mum, it’s me, Catherine, then you’ll hang up.
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Would a more loving partner have pieced the clues together? Should I have known? It seemed so obvious now.
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An aspiring poet sat with me in Captain Quackenbush’s Intergalactic Dessert Co. and Espresso Café on Guadalupe Street.
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One day, he says, he’ll ride over the top of the western peak and never come back.
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For weeks, even months, after the gig, he remembered that feeling, could cling to it every now and then even as it faded or slipped from his grasp. He would ...
“Are you the satirist?” I said,
“I certainly am not. I don’t think I’ve ever even met a satirist.”
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I’ve tried to squelch that terror, to chase it deep inside me so that the watchers might turn away, but the moment of the bargain always wrenches it forth again.
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“Sometimes you think you know people but you don’t.”
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The bees are flying upside down, you said.
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No, I didn’t know Trevor all that well, but, you know, I saw him around.
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