Dad called people of a certain strain bullshitter. I listened carefully, but something was off. Bullshitters were always men over six feet tall with hair and confidence. Dad was five six, wore cowboy boots and a big buckle. As a boy, looking around, figuring stuff out, I saw keeping up with the neighbors required smoke and mirrors. I felt uneasy about this dupery, like a grey cloud following me around. Dad only ever had one friend, and he was shorter than Dad. That bothered me, not the height, but the fact that everybody has friends. Mom had friends, I had friends, the neighbor guys had friends. Those guys sat around in lawn chairs in the garage sharing a twelve pack and laughing at their own jokes. Dad never came around. How could they possibly be bullshitters? They weren’t hiding anything from anybody. White lies became the norm in our household; we became a collection of parrots. Mom kept quiet. Her opinions were cut short, contradicted, eventually Mom stopped speaking up, too tired to push it. …

“I’m only ever satisfied when someone else is in pain. Does that make me a terrible person?” “Honestly, Craig?” “Yes, be enti—no! Not honestly! Who’d ever ask you that honestly!” “It kinda sounds like you know the answer to your own question.” “Like I’d take advice from a junior partner who’s my age.” “Glad to see you’re feeling like yourself again. Okay, what. Stop grumbling at me. Stop it.” “I wasn’t grumbling.” “Uh-huh. And we both know that the only reason I’m a junior is because you got the first promotion and then the boss bit the bullet.” “I’d have gotten promoted regardless.” “Same. That’s my point. No. We are not doing the grumbling thing again.” “John? Can I ask you something?” “Sure.” “Why do you stay here? You could do the law thing anywhere.” “I dunno. Sunk cost fallacy? Or maybe the fact that every time I try to leave you bump my pay by enough that the wife convinces me to stay. At this rate, I’m probably making more than you are. It’s …

When Mr. Roberts lost his hearing, he didn’t mind Mr. Grigg’s leaf-blower. It was pleasant watching leaves tumble in a steady gust of wind. Then Roberts miraculously recovered his hearing and lost his vision. Griggs and his leaf-blower became Mr. Roberts’ most hated enemies. Roberts kept a rifle in his garage, but he couldn’t find it. He might have asked a neighbor for help, but that would have been incriminating, no? Some say he died from scowling. Some say his liver gave out. But get this, the moment after Mr. Roberts died, his vision came back. Daniel Coshnear is author of Jobs & Other Preoccupations (Helicon Nine 2001) winner of the Willa Cather Fiction Award and Occupy & Other Love Stories (Kelly’s Cove Press 2012) and winner of the Novella Prize for Homesick, Redux (Flock 2015), recipient of a Missouri Review Editor’s Prize and a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship. His newest story collection, Separation Anxiety was released in 10/21 by Unsolicited Press.

I’m going to tell you right now, chasing women’s clothing around the dooryard is what it’s come down to. All on account of four turtle eggs. I work for Leon because social security ’ll only go so far, plus Leon’s seventy-five years old with more money than brains and fingers itching to get into every hole they can find, even when there ain’t a hole. That’s what his girlfriend Janey told him just before she drove her RV off to California. Leon set himself up to the cabin for a couple of beers and aggravation. Thinking about Janey leaving him in Maine gets him hot and miserable until he spies this mother turtle dig a hole and bury a sprawl of eggs. Then he’s huffing and blowing for me. “We got to fence them eggs. These guys,” he means his son and grandson that also live on the place and benefit from his money without working, “they get to drinking and running the four-wheel gators around, they’ll trample the eggs.” I put thirty-five dollars worth …

She had fitted herself into the corner booth, the one under the smeared window, the last one with the torn red 1956 leatherette seat. She was sort of blonde, not bleached but just didn’t quite make it, dirty blonde, they call it, mousey. This girl ‘just abouts’ everything, can’t stop looking in the mirror until she can’t stand to look in a mirror and thereby never catching even a momentary glimpse of what she thinks she is looking for, disenchantment slowly filling her up and going hard, inspissating under the dry, brilliant, desiccant of perpetual disappointment. In another age she might have been drawing on a cigarette, taking in deep medicinal draughts and flicking ashes, a little self-conscious, maybe, sitting alone like that, a little defensive, a le old Eddy Hopper, you know, seared with stark electric outlines, the entire world jittering on neon gas—but not out of time. She never managed to get aboard the 1960s Dreamliner like those other girls with their shimmering hair and their generous soft looks, nestled in big, strong …

Congratulations on taking the first step toward a better ecological niche, and a better you. I’m naturalist extraordinaire and personal trainer Chuck Darwin, here to welcome you to Evolutionary Fitness! Whether you’re a middle-of-the-food-chain specimen in need of a confidence boost, or an apex predator who’s gone a bit soft, any organism can take advantage of the tips and tricks in this five-DVD box set. So let’s crank it up a few notches, whip you into tip-top shape and attract the partner of your dreams – at least, for this mating season. Just clear out a nice roomy spot in your cave, grassy plain, or lowland swamp, and let’s get moving! Routine 1: The ‘Run-For-Your-Life’ Let’s face it, we’ve all got predator problems. Talons swiping after your hindquarters? Razor-sharp jaws aiming for your jugular? Long, sticky tentacles dragging you down to a deep sea abyss? This first routine is a fresh twist on the classic Flight or Fright response. I don’t care if you’re a lowly rodent or a majestic blue whale – those propellers …

Even here, I’m sat across from another screenwriter sipping his coffee and scrolling through his tablet. The sticky sweet smoke from his pipe wafts over to me. He puffs with his left hand, scrolls and sips with his right. Still, it’s preferable to the clouds of cigarette smoke which choke me on most patios. He’s taunting me with his air of accomplishment. His buttercup yellow button down. His relentless pipe smoking. I think he’s watching dailies. Definitely a director then. And I am the ghost of a screenwriter, haunting him. He hails a waitress without looking up. One slender finger in the air. Another coffee. Yes, I think I’ll have one too. Though I can feel the buzz in my veins already, I cannot bear the thought of sitting here without one. I look to catch her eye, but she has gone back behind the counter. Fine, he’s more important. That’s almost certain. I can tell from his degree of focus, something is being made. That rare result. The world’s cafe bars are our office, …

The evening air had cooled considerably as the sun set over Rome. The brisk breeze floating in through the open door of Il Flagello gave Max chills as he sat at the bar with a cold beer half drank, thinking. He was lost in thought and lost in his beer. He wondered what he was going to do next and how was the outcome going to pay off. A pang hit him in the heart, and he felt lousy again. He drank his beer half-heartedly registering the chatter between the regulars and the bar owner, Sergio. “Did you hear Sergio? Eh, hai sentito?” “Sentito? Heard what?” A man asked. “They’re closing la Lombardia,” Sergio said assessing the thick white foam rising on top of the yellow liquid pouring into the tilted glass, waving like a yellow flag in a desperate wind. “Non e’ posssibile;” another man said with a long hiss from a chipped tooth. “La Lombardia is a region, not a ssstore.” “Cosi ha detto, Mort. They just closed Lazaretto,” Sergio said. All the …

The incandescent lights beam silvery glows in every direction, while the sunlight pierces through windows and bounces from stainless steel machines to clean white walls. You smell the scent of detergent clashing with lavender dryer sheets, rose petal fabric softener and hear the trickling waterfall of coins from the change machine. It’s Saturday. Appliances purr loudly announcing that they’re brimming to capacity. You see the usuals walk in. Andrew gives you his typical head nod while leaving no strand of his clean, tapered mane out of place. You surmise he’s single, working in an office, by the way he hangs up his dress shirts in rows like color-coded file folders. You can’t help but notice Helen, reticent to make eye contact. You know she works or lives nearby as she traipses to and from a neighboring building and hurriedly so. You revere her appearance, always perfectly polished with subtle makeup and beautifully coiffed curls. Mrs. Johnson came by, her round frame moving with short quick steps. She loved when you complemented her on her new …