“Goddamn sand.” “What?” “G-o-d-d-a-m-n s-a-n-d.” Will speaks slowly, forcing the letters through the fluttering black on white kufiya wrapped around his mouth, nose and neck. “C-a-n-‘t s-e-e s-h-i-t,” Popeye yells back. “What?” Popeye yells in Will’s ear, “Said can’t see shit.” Will nods as the two soldiers brace against the orange wall, whipping dirty sand all around them. “Should stay here,” Popeye shouts in Will’s face. “What the fuck you

Cat waited for Miriam to get up. He waited a long time, but she didn’t rise. She didn’t put fresh herring on his plate. She didn’t fill his water bowl. She didn’t open the back door so he could refuse to go out in the snow. She didn’t clean his box, even when he mewled and scratched sawdust all over the rug. By afternoon, Cat was very hungry. He walked

Thunder echoed in the distance as the rain pelted down, the cold, fat drops of water crashing against the traveler’s cloak. Tattered and frayed at the edges, one could tell from a distance the cloak and its owner had seen far better days. Shuffling forward in the darkness, the figure finally reached the doorway of a ramshackle inn at the end of the street. A battered and faded sign hung

On the way to work, Annabel Prentiss found herself stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. An 18-wheeler had careened into a ditch off of the highway, and the back half of the rig blocked two lanes of traffic. Good thing her job didn’t require a clock-in time. It didn’t require much of anything, truthfully, except transcription skills and perseverance to put up with the hogwash at the office. She scoped deposition testimony