The room smelled like beer and sweat and crushed velvet. The air seemed to hum, hot and full of dust particles and guitar feedback. 

She wasn’t cruel. She smiled when he refilled her water glass. She asked about his mother. They had sex with the lights on.

That sudden clarity pierced through her: the baby’s soft blanket; the Frappuccino sweating in her hand, the grocery list in the diaper bag. All of this could change and when it did, she would cease to exist.

Some girls become Liz. Some girls want to be her. Some just want her. A fictional short story about Liz, Richard and an anonymous anti-hero.

(Checking texts over lunch) Jon Jon Jon Jon Jon Jon Jon. That’s how my brain works.

I remember listening to you play “Ashokan Farewell” on the violin, your head bowed, the notes clear and sorrowful

The last thing she remembered was Marty getting up to vomit. She considered, momentarily, getting up to help. She was still on her knees, her head turned sideways, in profile, on the couch, her arms dangling at her sides.

Liam refuses to speak to me now. Because, for once, I took action. Non-violent-action. Well, a series of actions, actually, the first of which was to invite him out for drinks when he came home for winter break.

At this remark, her forehead crinkled, and it was clear that she hadn’t remembered their previous meeting. This should have come as no surprise to Lyle, who had lived forty-three-years of un-memorability. His style of dress unremarkable, his height medium, his face neither handsome nor ugly...

Even my skin appeared more limpid than it did when I was in my twenties, when I was always on some badly cut party drug, chain-smoking yellow American Spirits, and shoving late-night, grease-dripping food into my mouth.

When I get home, I buy the rateyourboyfriend.com domain name for the $900 upfront fee

Darren had dropped out of art school after just six weeks, but he still insisted on referring to everything as his “practice”. Right now his practice involved sending fan letters to alt-lit

One of the men I’ve dated has a wooden cross erected in his front yard, and another guy drives a minivan.

Three hits and down I went. Into the floor. Puddled and leaking through the downstairs neighbor’s ceiling.

I feel too sorry, I’m too tired, and though I desperately want to change my life, I’m not in a position to, which is to say I’ve taken up the position of defending my nondefendable position. Position underneath position.

The air felt so heavy that it would suffocate all language.

‘Eaten.’ He rectifies, his tongue flips out and recoils in saurian swiftness.

And by:

Elizabeth Ellen’s Instagram account (@shortflightlongdrive). Come for the cougar stalking the line between avant-tasteful and not not ironic literary hot mom, stay for zooming in on the books in the background. Elizabeth Ellen’s Instagram. I’m liking it for the captions.

My surroundings, though I’d moved through them prolifically as a child, seemed then like an opaque screen placed there to conceal something from me

On the train to Avenue du Roi Albert, I knew that this would be the last time I would see her. Feeling time slip over my fingertips like waterflow, I decided I would savor the experience as fully as I

You’ll know you’re entering pound-town, U.S.A. if you start to lie a lot

Because isn’t that the true nature of love, protecting each other from our wickedest parts?

The moon men decided to come to Earth because they didn’t like the way the Earth people were always staring at them. Whenever they looked up at that enormous blue orb through their telescope, the

Take another fry to further the feeling.

If I was a dog, I wouldn't be responsible for my own life.