Frederick in St Paul, Minnesota #5 (Banality of daily life)

These two younger guys wearing orange hunter's ski masks broke into our apartment when I was at work. My wife came back from her mother's and surprised them. One of them shot her in the stomach and the other started screaming at him "What the fuck are you doing? Let's just get the fuck out of here." She's in intensive care but she's been conscious a few times and was able to give a description of them. (Josh Black)

Jeannie in Pocotella, Idaho #4 (Violence)

How do we kill this world in ourselves? My husband is upstairs, shot through the throat with a revolver and my boy is drowned in the bathtub. I'm sitting in the driveway with the car running and the snow pouring from the white winter sky thinking hard about the pathless road to God. Salvation. (Mark Johnson)

Micah in Summit, KY #3 (Violence)

Aint never had a fuckin hard day in your life, have ye? Never been beaten like a dog and had your face ground down in the gravel till you beg for the kind of mercy that doesn't exist in this broken world. I sure as fuck have and I thank the Allmighty for ever beatin I ever got; beat all tha sentiment and worldliness and hope out of me. My stepdaddy used ta beat me every day jus for exercise and that brutality jus became a part of my life. I kindly wondered if God might come and fill all tha ugly spaces inside me but he jus never did, now I'm out there somewheres in the cold night hurtin someone like I've been hurt. (Harry Cloud)

Alexandria in Rennes, France #2 (Sexuality)

There's a lamp at the edge of our bed. I'm sitting next to it with my panties off, smoking a cigarette and waiting for him to come home. I anticipate the savage pleasure that his body will bring me and I slowly glide my ring and middle fingers in and out of my secret wound until I throb with ecstasy. I hear him open the front door and I put the the cigarette out, prop myself up on my elbows and ache for his caress. Joy of man's desiring. (Christopher Feltner)

Stuart in Augusta, Georgia #1 (Dreams)

Had a dream last night that I was back in my grandfather's old house. I was asleep in the bed in the basement and my grandmother who died 6 years back slowly descended the stairs with a vase that didn't have anything in it. I tried to speak to her as she approached but I couldn't produce anything other than these paine, moaning sounds and I realized that these sorrowful calls were my grief over her death. She laid down in bed next to me and touched my face and I started crying softly. Overwhelmed with my loss, I leapt out of bed, opened the sliding glass door and ran out into the muggy summer night until I reached the banks of the creek that bordered their land. First light was breaking through the night sky and about a hundred yards East there were 3 dogs tearing viciously at a dead body that looked a little like our neighbor. I jumped in that creek and never came back up for air. (Microwave Windows)

Adeline Deacon

There's two childern dead in that house, one of em' drowned in the bathtub: body broken by a fallen rafter and the other just ash and bone after the fire swallered him up. Felt it coming on fer some time, felt my mind straying, losing track of this world and wondering where I was most of the time. It was like being in some sort of dream where you're wandering around this place that looks kindly familiar and you recognize people as someone you think you know and that confusion was terror and loss of love. I saw myself sitting on the porch of my daughter's house in a wheelchair shitting myself, mumbling crazy and having to be fed. My grandson looked so much like my daddy, ever time I looked at him I felt daddy's hands on my body in the night. I had to catch myself, cause I kept wanting to talk to him like a little girl talks to a man who she fears and would like to see dead and loves with a violent love all at oncet. My daughter brought him and my other grandson over one day so I could watch them for her while she went to work. He was taking a bath and he called to me to come in and help him warsh. When I got in there he said something to me that daddy used to say and I grabbed him by his hair and held him under the water. He struggled for a while and then went limp. I went downstairs and locked the younger one in a closet and set fire to the old family home. Laid down on my back in the prairie grass and watched the flames climb into the darkening overcast sky. God, there's so much in this world worth forgetting.

Quarterly Horrorscopes--Winter Solstice Edition

Aries (March 21-April 19) You've planted bladders and rectums in the garden in your backyard. Urine and blood and wrecked childhoods are sprouting from barren earth.

Taurus (April 20-May 20) Your father is somewhere out there in the darkness. He's being hunted by dogs.

Gemini (May 21-June 21) Pull the spike from your throat so that all that light and those oceans of dead fish can pour forth.

Cancer (June 22-July 22) Slaughter your cattle. Let their huge carcasses rot in the hot sun, they intended to kill your child.

Leo (July 23-August 22) The conquering army have destroyed the city where you live. Now they'll murder your family.

Virgo (August 23-September 22) Rip out the long, elastic veins from your arms and intertwine them with piano wire to make a rope that will keep you tethered to that fence by the creek.

Libra (September 23-October 23) You're sitting on the porch of your parent's home. You're eating ash and aluminum.

Scorpio (October 24-November 21) That stream is flowing toward that land where the sun will fall after you pull it from the sky.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21) Follow the dirt path that is lit with torches and moonlight. There's going to be a human sacrifice tonight.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19) Several ecstatic revelers pounding Frame Drums and rattling Elephant Bells are emerging from an enormous vaginal cavity.

Aquarius (January 20-February 18) Cave in his larynx with the butt of your rifle. There's too much sound on this earth.

Pisces (February 19-March 20) Her round buttocks arching toward you in the half light of your bedroom. Light from the hallway. Your hands are on her breasts and you devour her flesh.