Two young cowboys are given a rope by their father. The father has decided they have not enough food to feed each other. Only two of them can live, not three. But it’s not a father’s right to choose. He left a rope in their room. They had two bedsContinue Reading

A defunct suburban holdout, condemned to demolition, which had thrived as our greatest embodiment of the American Dream, was continually terrorized by a roguish group of little cowboys. Crimes of the little cowboys include, and are not limited to the following: snot-nosing; cruel indecency; public drunkenness; father-murder. Approaches to exterminatingContinue Reading

Oaktea has always been in love with every aspect of a book–from the design to its contents, everything contributes to the experience. She started making comics for the all-in-one art and words combination, and eventually started working in bookstores to feed her voracious habit, as well as her love andContinue Reading

“So what do you do for a living?” “You could say I’m in law enforcement.” “Like a deputy? A sheriff? Do you carry a gun? Can I see your badge?” “Hold up, little darling. It’s nothing like that. You know the wanted posters?” “Like the ones they have at theContinue Reading

I could do small things. Last spring, I shelled the whole pea patch. Mom kissed my green-stained palms and told me I was good. I could sing under my breath so the prairie wind would not hear. Every day I sang as I carried water to the house, the nakedContinue Reading

First, my neighbor became a cowboy. Then, when his wife divorced him, he became a bandit in a mask. Overnight, he lost access to his house and became something like a raccoon. He dug through our trash. I caught him. He denied everything in the beam of my flashlight. AContinue Reading

Not being one to like crowds much, Hiram Mitchell had stopped his horse down the street, far enough to be away from the people and close enough to see the scaffold. He checked his watch and found it was 11:40, which was a little early to his taste since theyContinue Reading

The old man, tired, hungry, sunburned, and sore, pushed himself through the saloon doors, his joints creaking louder than the creaky old hinges. Inside the bar, his feet fell on even creakier floorboards, and he heard the wobbly strains of a honky-tonk piano, even creakier still. He had a headache,Continue Reading

My brother’s ankle grew like a balloon. He dragged it around and bumped into things. ‘What’s happening to me?’ he said. He said it always and threw his hands down, having kicked over a train set. ‘I blame you,’ he said. ‘You’re a bad brother.’ Once I blindfolded him andContinue Reading