He spent all morning with his eyes on the game, grunting once noncommittally when she asked if it was her turn to do the laundry, and after lunch he had flat-out refused to dance with her when a slow waltz came on the radio. He didn’t feel like it, he said.

She swats him away as she would a fly.

The ceiling fan stares down in utter loathing at the man who sighs and rolls away from the woman. If she was mine, thinks the fan, oh how I would waltz with her. Around and around and around.

HADDAYR COPLEY-WOODS

on “The Desires of Houses”

I believe short stories should take months, if not years, to write.

This one? I was pissed off at my husband for taking me for granted, and for nagging me—even as I realized I was taking him for granted, too. As I began to do the laundry, the story wrote itself in my head, a narration of my actions.

At the time, our sons were down for a nap, and I wanted to nap, too. But after I did the laundry, scooped the cat box, scrubbed the floor, and took a shower, I sat down and wrote this story instead of sleeping, because I knew I’d forget it upon waking.

It took me three hours total to write, type, edit, and submit the story to its first publisher.

And it’s the story everybody loves.

Horny

Greg Boyd

I wake up horny. God’s punishing me again, testing my endur-ance, so I fall to my knees and pray for strength. But evil thoughts course through my mind like a polluted stream. I try my best to purify them. I am chlorine, lava soap. I bubble and foam, but in the end it happens again anyway. It’s always the same. My soul screams at the exact moment of my body’s release. It’s a righteous voice that wells up inside me, a deep and hoary voice that comes out of the wilderness and is filled with the indignation of the ages. It inspires in me a kind of holy terror, and afterward I shake for a good five minutes.