Chapter 12 of Hal Niedzviecki's new novel, The Archaeologists, serialized in Geist and four other Canadian literary magazines.

Joseph always told me, you belong to Newfoundland. Don’t call yourself a Canadian. You are an islander, despite an Alberta birth certificate.

A young girl gets a taste of show business by acting as Sleeping Beauty in a sideshow.

"On an afternoon mean as a hook we hauled him up to his nightmare of us and laughed"

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"My daughter has fallen in love with a professional hockey player. He refers to her as his puck bunny, which I have decided to find cute."

The wind blows. The sun dwindles. The ice waits.

"The world thinks of me as a great lover, but the truth is, I’m not."

"How do people shake off the embarrassment of being themselves, ignore the distastefulness of all that is human and just get along?"

Mr. Maillard scared me from the moment he stepped from his red Chevy pickup. He stood six inches shorter than me and weighed sixty pounds less, but exuded tough son-of-a-bitch like cologne.

"I hate feeling sorry for people, because the world isn't perfect and I can't feel sorry for every unfortunate bastard I come across."

"Nietzsche, for example, thought his pen was a hammer, but he may have been mistaken because German professors rarely did their own carpentry."

Another classic story from Geist's 20th Anniversary Collector's Issue.

"The waiting room was filled with junkies. During my visit, the doctor almost fell asleep. He sent me for some tests, but lost the results."

Uncle Tom lies in St. Paul’s Emergency pacemaker jumping like a sockeye salmon while he teaches two nurses four verses of Danny Boy.

A paranoid office-worker relieves the alienation she feels in her job by writing experimental lyric prose.

So how can we be Québécois if we don’t live in Québec? Well, for the love of all that’s holy, where the hell do we live, then?

"You know what I think it's worth?" Goldie said. "Fifteen bucks for the frame."

Honourable mention in the 8th Annual Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest.

"We haven’t slept since Saturday, we’ve been so excited by the arrival of a stranger, an odd sort of city mouse lost in the country."

“Thank god for you,” Polly said one day after work, as she and Ruth sat under the fluorescent lights of the town’s only bar. “You’re the only normal one here.”

"He listened to the message three times, then sent a text to Ciara begging off dinner without giving a reason."

The Halifax mafia never had to sell cornpuffs to meet Morris' quota.

"Naked men. At each other all the time, all day long. I can’t get it out of my head."