On "Rex" by Bonnie Nadzam (5162 words) ***

I'm not sure what's going on in this story. I'm sure I could parse it out if I read it three or four times. There's something about a daughter being raped--and possibly killed--something about a trip to Batan, something about a ten-year-old prostitute, about welding, about men, about voyeurism, about bars and drinking and spilled coffee, about a magazine and airplanes and a phone conversation with a wife in a troubled marriage. And there's something--a lot of things, in fact--about Jessie. It's one of those stream of consciousness experiments. And it's one of those great vomitings of words across a page that somehow add up to more than the sum of their parts, to excess, to word brilliance. I'll never see welding as quite the same again. Read the story here at Mississippi Review.

On "Accidents" by Brock Clarke (4270 words) ****

Here's a story from Brock Clarke's first collection What We Won't Do. It's a story very similar to "The Fat," which is also featured in that collection. While I like that story more, it is no longer available online. However, that's just a reason to go out and buy the book, if you haven't already, especially if you like "Accidents." Both stories involve a journalist in a small town and his editor and a marriage gone bad. What's interesting to me, about "Accidents," is to see how Clarke takes essentially the same situation and writes something distinctly different from that other piece. Read the story here at the Mississippi Review.

On "Shot Girls" by Kim Chinquee (5097 words) ****

This is a story about two sisters, each of whom wants to be like the other, about what it means to become the other. Okay, I've made the story sound like Parent Trap 3, but it's not like that at all. The girls in this story go through some messed-up stuff. Okay, maybe it does sound like Parent Trap 3--but this definitely isn't Disney fodder. These girls aren't smiling at the end. These girls grow up, in some rather unpleasant ways. Read the story here.

On "The Au Pair" by Sean Ennis (2380 words) ****

What this story has going for it is a voice. Take one babysitter, thrust her among a bunch of male college students, and let the lust begin. And it's mostly lust, for she's a taken item. Expect to see more about Sean Ennis on this blog. I discovered his writing maybe a year ago, and he's one of the most exciting new writers I've come across on the Web. Read the story here.

On "Song and Dance" by Mark Lafferty (8366 words) *****

The rather mundane title aside (but a lot of great stories have mundane titles), this may be the best online story from 2007. Certainly, it was the best online story that I read. The story is one of a paraplegic teen, not exactly the most uplifting of topics. And Lafferty does a great job of milking this sad situation for all the sadness one could get from it, but he does it in such a way that it doesn't seem sentimental or sappy. It's just sad. The way Lafferty manages to do this may be in the details, how he gives you the nitty-gritty everyday reality of someone who must rely on others for virtually everything, including cleaning up after, well, bodily functions most of us take for granted. As would be expected, moments of possible mild hope occur--and are dashed, perhaps tragically, or perhaps like one would have to expect. Read the story here at the Mississippi Review.