Recommended by Electric Literature



Issue No. 127

Original Fiction





A few days after my old friend Erick Engman went to jail—for the awful thing he did to that poor woman’s mouth—Violet and I invited guests for dinner. Frank Keck, who’d done his dental residency with Erick and me, came over with his lovely wife Maureen. We talked about Engman, how sad it was, how weird, him of all people. Frank saw a picture of him on the local news—haggard and old in his mug shot, his hair wild, his eyes dark buttons, uneven stubble caked like wet sand across his face.

Read the full story here!

About the Author



Joe Fassler lives in Brooklyn, where he’s working on his first novel. He received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and runs the The Atlantic’s “By Heart” series.





Copyright © 2014 by Joe Fassler.









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