Category: Fiction
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Home
Vedika was tired and angry, but mostly tired. Anger was exhausting. Her husband’s father was infuriating even in the best of times – he belonged firmly to a generation that seemed stubbornly incapable of thinking of women as equals and seemed to regard her dedication to her career as a character flaw. The deafening silence…
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Lucky
The airstrike rattled the city, everything shook. Dust rattled down from the rafters and somewhere in the basement below an infant cried. Mo sat as still as he could amidst the crush of strangers and tried to focus on breathing. The air was thin, too many lungs sucking oxygen and not enough ventilation. The earth…
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Perfection
The night was warm with the scent of rain and a few lonely stars visible through the clouds. I pulled my scarf up the back of my neck, flush against my helmet to take the edge off the wind. Ahead of me, the glow of my high beams threw the surrounding darkness into sharper relief…
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Sometimes a girl has to buy her own flowers
The flower was huge, pink, and spiny – like something from the surface of an alien world. Jenna was enthralled. Around her, the farmers market buzzed with people and activity, but she was long gone. She pictured herself as the exiled queen of an ancient empire, cast adrift in space, her last loyal retainers…
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A place with a view
Molly ran down the dirt road, squealing with delight. She felt as though if she went any faster her body would break gravity’s hold and she’d be able to soar off into the sky. She jumped and spread her arms wide imagining it, before landing knees bent and then springing forward again. Look at me…
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Freedom
The afternoon was cold and foggy – a typical summer day in San Francisco – and Gary was glad he’d grabbed his heavy jacket on the way out the door. Traffic was a mess, as usual, and he shivered a bit as he carefully wound his way between the lanes of traffic. Lane splitting downtown…
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The Peter Principle
There are managers who you like and even learn from, people who make you feel motivated and excited to be part of a team and who lead by example instead of relying on threats and bribes. And then there are managers like Roy. He’s not a bad guy and was a decent engineer, but some…
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It’s a start
Getting older is one of the few inevitable’s in life., and yet it’s a constant source of surprise. I still can’t quite wrap my head around how fast the years since have gone. 9 years in a failed marriage, a house that my ex kept, a pile of songs no one sings on albums no…
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For God and Country
The sound of artillery was thunder, earthquakes, and every bad dream he had ever had as a child rolled into one. A sound more felt than heard, it made his bones ache as the vibrations poured through him. He had never particularly wanted to be a soldier, but when you are a young man with…
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Going Home
“A 20% down payment on a $600,000 house is $120,000. You’ll need that plus another $20,000 to cover closing costs at minimum to get started.” Back in India that amount of money would have bought a palace and even elsewhere in the US it would have bought a mansion, but here in the Bay Area…
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If you were a painting
A blank canvass is both exhilarating and terrifying for an artist. Just think about it – greatness and mediocrity weighed in the balance, an infinite number of images and ideas, all exist in that blank canvass as potential. Not fact, not even fiction, but potential. Making that first mark is the most dangerous thing a…