He smiled at her, a private smile, the way you might smile at a dog, or a good meal you’ve just finished making for yourself when you’re home alone. His eyes were bright and I always thought that they looked at you like he wanted you to think that you…

Even before he gave me the tricycle, I knew how things were going to go. To Rick, life had always been one big joke. For our first anniversary, he took me to his cabin on a lake several miles north of the city, where kids would bike to and fro…

It was back in the time before the electric light, when people still walked on air, and the volcanoes spat water instead of fire, and the sparrows pecked at the frozen pigs’ carcasses which lay scattered about outside the entrance to the home of the Professor George Argyris, which stretched,…