All these stories were written decades ago, which is why there are no references to texting.
I’ve arranged them in the order in which they were written, though I’m only sure of the first and the last. The middle stories were bunched together. 
I’ve provided an excerpt from each one that may capture a bit of its essence. You can click on the title.
        For those of you who don’t like to read off a screen, directions on how to print out the stories are given below.

It was at this point that I started thinking about finding Boy. The idea both attracted and scared me. Scared me because I was afraid that I’d find a confirmation of all my worst fears about what life does to us. But, I’d think, maybe it doesn’t have to be that way; maybe Boy had landed on his feet from the great fall he’d had.
(7 pages)

Not that the library wasn’t concerned about the man; they were. He was part of the general derelict problem, though a special case because of his size and apparent madness. What the others cared most deeply about was not his choice of novels, but where they would be on the day when he would run amok.
(4 pages)

I gave little thought to Walter’s accident immediately after it happened — it was later events that would lead me to reconsider it, recreate it in my mind. And under this careful examination each element, even the hot night, took on a purposefulness in my mind, moving Walter inexorably toward his fall; all seemed to have a role in an intricate causality, like some clockwork mechanism.
(6 pages)

Brandon came often in the next months. He told Mother that he had stayed away so long, for over a year, because he had never liked to be around that silent, sneaky-eyed bastard she was married to. Maybe so, but I also think we were a phase he went through. We were his fiefdom; at this point in our lives he would arrive to the jubilant trumpet of our need.
(5 pages)

If Earl were to have a taste of hell, it would have to be me who gave it to him. Which kind of made me the devil. You’d think it would bother me, to say it like that, but it didn’t. At least the devil had power.
(7 pages)

He gazed out the window, past the figures gathered on the playing field, and contemplated writing a book. In it he would describe the internal workings of a renaissance. Surely his position, at the epicenter of the upheaval that had transformed this town, gave him a unique perspective. All change, he knew, had radiated out from the window display fifteen feet from where his suede loafers rested on a carpet patterned in sedate blocks of blue and gray.
(8 pages)

The town, in its pride and shame, could turn its back on Edmund Glass, but, standing beside him, Spencer had to feel sympathy for this fifty-three-year-old man, twice married and twice divorced, never before a father. This man who had bestowed his name, and all his considerable wealth, on this little mulatto bastard.
(9 pages)

As Vigilante I had been granted a Godlike power. I understood what my role was: To uphold the moral underpinnings of society. A Godlike power gave one a Godlike perspective. My only worry was whether I’d know when the time came for thunderbolts.
(11 pages)

At least Sandra got to die in our home, before it was sold and everything in it was auctioned off — we got hit with heavy fines. Still, let me say this, because she would want it said: We were a team. In a way we complemented something in each other. Maybe it was for the worse — we moved each other on the same path. But I regret nothing.
(14 pages)

“You know what the book was. I took it home and got to the page where Perry is first described, and after that my whole world concentrated on one person, on Perry Smith. He was me, I was him. I could understand him in a way others couldn’t. Like where he says how it is with us, how one hurt gets piled on top of another til somebody else has to take on some of the load. Which is what happened when he found himself in the Clutter house. It was those four people who took on a good part of his hurt.”
(8 pages)

To tell you this story I have to go back more than forty years, to when I was a wife and mother. The marriage was never a bed of roses, but who gets that? My husband was a good enough man, he provided. He made a mistake that hurt the three of us, and maybe that’s where a lot of the blame belongs, and not all on me. You can decide.
(5 pages)

Further reading:

For an excerpt, click here




To run off on your printer: Highlight the entire story, going from bottom (end of story) to top (beginning). Don’t go from top to bottom; for some reason, that doesn’t work so well. But, please, avoid looking at the endings. In some cases, this will spoil things for you. 
Right click the highlighted story, then choose the Print option.
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