Kate Ryan

Sheila applied widely and on a whim. She needed a job and she needed one fast.

The birds abandon their posts in the pepper trees, sending tiny, oblong leaves raining to the ground.

“Don’t you smash that cake in my face, or I’ll never forgive you,” she said, and she never did, not really.

She closed in on the open pores enlarged ten times their normal size by a high magnification pocket mirror.

Alison learned from her grandmother how a plastic smile could take you places—especially in a place like Hollywood.

One of my biggest fears is having a random stranger ask me, "how it’s going?" They might as well ask if I’d like to step into their van and get murdered.

I saw my old babysitter at a women’s wrestling cage match.

It was a tradition of theirs. When siblings Sue and Johnny went home to their mother’s for Christmas, they watched the 11 o’clock local news.

Like booster engines emptied of fuel, my limbs become disposable, useless tanks as the blood rushes from them.

His mind rode the lines, circling on an endless loop to nowhere as he attempted to go about his activities.