Husband, “The Husband Stitch”
The first-person narrator of this story is the wife and her physical appearance is notably characterized by a ribbon which is a constant presence around her throat. He is not allowed to touch the ribbon and she is singularly ambiguous about its purpose or nature. The natural result of this situation is intensifying curiosity on the part of the husband which flames into a conflagration of paranoid need to know the secret no matter the cost. And the cost, it turns out, is greater than even his obsessions could construct.
Detective Stabler and Detective Benson, “Especially Heinous”
The two characters are the center of this story are actually characters who appeared on the TV crime show Law & Order: SVU. The story is written in the form of a capsule descriptions of episodes of the show broken down into seasons, but as the season continue the descriptions become increasingly more erratic in their content.
Unnamed narrator, “Difficult at Parties”
The first-person narrator in this story has just returned home from the hospital and is attempting recovery from a sexual assault. An attempt to rebuild her sexual relationship with her partner is undertaken in the form of ordering DVDs from an adult film company. But the DVD begins playing on its own with one very strange and unusual special feature: she has been given exclusive access to the private unspoken thoughts going on inside the heads of the porn stars as they go about the business of having sex on camera.
Unnamed narrator, “Eight Bites”
Another unnamed female first-person narrator relates the story of her life in this very disquieting tale of body image and a condition which may be an eating disorder or maybe a mental illness. The narrator has elected to undergo a severe and irreversible weight control surgical procedure. The question at the heart of the story is whether or not her circumstances really require such a drastic decision or whether the doctor agreeing to perform it is committing an act that is both morally reprehensible and professionally unethical.
