Leon coughed twice before the phone even picked up. “’Sup?” “What the fuck are you doing calling in sick? It’s the Thanksgiving weekend, the station’s got events every day!” Leon drew a slow breath. His supervisor Amy was a hard-working woman – since starting university he hadn’t known many bosses who’d get into the trenches with their student interns the way she did. And it didn’t hurt that she was a severe baddie who wa...

She was a vision. In the halogen lights above the radio station’s garage, her golden hair glowed white. Her eyes flickered with unrestrained passion. She stared up at him, teeth bared, her eyes for him and him alone. “Hey, dumbass. What do you call this?” Stephen stared down at the bundle grasped in her hands. “Those are…” he bit his tongue, “…wires?” “They’re cables. You have to coil them. You can’t tie them off like fuc...

“So… do you think they’ve forgotten about us?” Leon shook his head. He and Stephen had both been rooted to the same chairs for almost two hours, waiting for somebody, anybody, to come by and give them instructions. It was all beginning to feel like an initiation prank. Beyond the waiting room in which they’d been plunked and subsequently forgotten, the radio station still buzzed with the faint signs of life. His History o...

I shouldn’t have said that to him. Even if I had said it, I shouldn’t have used that tone. If I’d said it but hadn’t used that tone, he would have given me a Look. And the Look is terrifying, but it’s better than… If I’d had that tone but held my tongue, I wouldn’t have gotten… Oh God, he just gave me… I just got a spanking! I’m a grown-up and I just got a spanking! I’m standing with my undies around my ankles and I just...

“So, when am I going to see you get spanked?” Bertie nearly spat seltzer into his beard. “I beg your pardon?” Leanne smiled politely, as if she’d asked for nothing more than the time. She took another swig of her beer, tapping the bottle on the kitchen table. “You tell me that my sister spanks you at home, and I believe you. But as it stands, I’ve only seen Rachel getting her butt smacked, and you’ve seen me take it a bun...

"Miss Alice took a last heady sniff of the buttercups beneath the window of her former office. Over time her various gardeners had tried to tear them out – poisonous, they’d told her, and a weed to boot – but the flowers would not yield so easily to their efforts. Season after season they would return, their presence a bright yellow sign of unbowed resilience. Miss Alice could respect that. It would be their final season....

“SUCK MY BALLS, ASSHOLE!” With one last excited pump of her arms, Kris opened her hand and let loose. The die rattled across the narrow table, wobbled to a stop and rolled upright. Eleven. “Congratulations on your basic adequacy,” murmured Otis Chen beside her. “Shut the fuck up, Otis, you’re dead. Dead people can’t talk.” The combat session had gotten her blood pumping, and she wasn’t going to let her luckless cohort dra...

Devin Kilroy hummed as he tended to the Zen garden on his desk. The shifting of the grains beneath his hand helped calm him, the fine movements needed to maintain the patterns he wove. He took a moment between every appointment to trace a few lines in the sand to de-stress. The Director of Human Resources had to be the calm, rational one in a time of conflict. A red light lit up on the telephone in front of him, and Devin...

The road before her was clear, the finish line almost close enough to touch. She floored the accelerator, the vehicle kicking up clouds of dirt and grit that blinded whatever drivers were still on her tail. She could almost taste sweet victory. Suddenly, everything went still. Dust particles hung in the air. An eerie silence came over her. A small round object was beginning to emerge from the cloud behind her, but it was...

Marianne stood at the window, naked but for the sheet wrapped around her torso, and watched her husband and his friends shoot the breeze beside their pickup trucks in the driveway below. She took another draw on her cigarette. Usually the nicotine helped to calm her in moments like this, but she was still angry, still unsatisfied by her last little act of rebellion. “Shit, is he home already?” The flabby man in her bed sh...

“Miss Conti, please see me after class.” The message delivered, Mr. Desaulniers returned to the seat at his desk as the bell rang. As if a cord had been cut, twenty-seven twelfth graders leapt to their feet, reaching for their coats and their phones, already making plans for what little remained of the afternoon. The twenty-eighth student sat frozen in her seat. Behind her, Mona Abdullah whispered, “Ooh, Mika’s in trouble...

Bertie tugged for the third time at his necktie, then finally unwound it and started over. The motions of a Windsor knot still came clumsily to him, but it wouldn’t do for the new Assistant Manager to look sloppy. No matter how many attempts it took, he was going to look the part. It would just take some getting used to. “Bertie! Can I have one of these?” The refrigerator door blocked most of her from view, but a shock of...

The week before Christmas, Mike discovered a butt plug in his sock drawer. It hadn’t been there before, as far as he knew, and if it hadn’t been for the thump it made when he’d opened the drawer looking for a pair of cotton crews he likely wouldn’t have noticed it at all. He held it between his fingers and stared dumbly in the bedroom’s early morning light. He had no idea how it had ended up among his clothes, but he had...

Sherrie took her seat, crossing her legs. This was new territory for her, and she wanted to ensure she was making the best impression. She’d gone for the ripped jeans over the fishnets, a loose-fitting IME T-shirt instead of the bodice that gave her the illusion of curves. She’d tied back her mane of strawberry blonde curls. The final look was… approachable, just another person on the street. And then she decided she had...

Sunlight peeked through a hole in the canvas above her, and try as she might Alicia couldn’t turn away to avoid it. The strange woman behind her snored loudly, and she finally had to admit that she wasn’t getting back to sleep. The morning air whistled in through the seams in the tent, and she shivered under her blanket. Her second night here, and she was still shocked by how cold the badlands could be. She’d found hersel...