Short Story Library

PENNSYLVANIA SENATE
PASSES RESTROOM
EQUALITY RESOLUTION
By LARRY CENTOR
HARRISBURG, Pa. – The Pennsylvania Senate has passed a resolution calling for equal restroom facilities for heterogeneous and homogeneous individuals along the state’s toll roads.
By a 33 to 14 vote, with two abstentions, the Senate passed the Restroom Equal Access Measure, or REAM as it usually referenced. “We feel it’s [...]

I am a jealous lover, and this morning I searched through the pockets of the trousers you left at my house, looking for any evidence of infidelity I could pin on you; I always enjoy grilling you with my suspicion, but when I found the poem in your pocket I felt a thrilling new anguish. [...]

“The Evolution is complete. You are finished!”
Adam rose and gazed at his perfect fingers. Eve stroked the silky strands of her golden hair as she lay in the lush, green grass of Eden.
“How did you create us?” asked Adam with wonder.
“With all the love in my heart . . . and a little help from [...]

After hours of walking, jumping, climbing, sliding, riding and eating, she still had it in her to ride the one and only Rollo coaster at Idlewild Amusement Park. A 1938 classic wooden coaster. Sure…it isn’t the Demon Drop or Magic Mountain, but it was a big deal to her. We waited in line as her [...]

Chris’s grandfather had been adamant all those years ago. “Real men don’t carry umbrellas, and don’t use hair dryers, ”the retired Sergeant-Major had said. Chris was certain that his grandfather would believe that real men did not color their hair. Chris’ older sister colored her hair and his grandmother had colored her hair a purplish [...]

Ever regret watching a box office movie? Mind you, I’m not talking about remorse for time wasted watching a movie with cinematography so bad it gives pause to wonder if a blind woodsman hacked the film together from discarded footage strewn about a cutting room floor. No, I’m referring to the disdain one feels after [...]

Go out for poms. Drivers license. An only family graduation party. Crappy grassland university. Communications major. Want ads. No job and having to live at home. Having to waitress forever. Marrying a dud. 1200 square foot house. 2.2 children. Sorority sisters on Facebook. Husband’s affair at the office with a younger, thinner woman. Trying to [...]

She knows it’s him when the phone rings. It’s the redundant, sing-song tone she’s been dreading since the last time he called. She doesn’t want to answer; but she knows if she doesn’t, it won’t stop. The painful tune will clog her ears and permeate the veins in her brain until finally, she gives in, [...]

In the old railway tunnel beneath the park I had one of those moments, the ones that feel like I’ve newly stepped out of a dream. I remember the first time. We were in a Tipperary lane and you’d jumped a fence for a pee and I wondered suddenly how I’d got there and why [...]

I took up smoking to lose the weight that I’d gained when I quit smoking earlier on.
Then I began chewing gum, big wads of it, every time I wanted a cigarette and I was able to quit again but I always had a full cheek of Double Bubble.
Pinch yourself between the thumb and forefinger each [...]