Robert Olen Butler's first book of short short stories, Severance, was published in 2006. His new collection is entitled Intercourse with 100 short short stories in 50 couples. It will be published by Chronicle Books in late May. He won the Pulitizer Prize for fiction in 1993 and is presently at work on a new novel.

Lizzie Andrew Borden, 44, murderer, acquitted in 1892

Nance O’Neil, 30, actress

in O’Neil’s home, Brindley Farm, Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, 1904

Lizzie

her hands the hands of Lady Macbeth that first time I saw her at the Colonial in Boston, she stands in a bright spot of light, her crimson hands flaring delicately before her, her eyes aflame at the only man in her world because he is a coward, and her vast, trilling voice fills me A little water clears us of this deed and I stand for a long while before him as he sleeps in the sitting room on the mohair sofa in his morning coat, his feet on the floor, and he is snoring, this man whose name I bear, whose touch I bear, my Papa, and the stepmother is finished already, upstairs, and the short-handled ax is light in my hand and I wait upon myself to decide: he gave away our farm in Swansea to the dead cow upstairs and he gave away the house on Fourth Street to her sister, and though to do all that would never have occurred to him on his own, he could not resist, he is a coward, and now Lady Macbeth pulls me close: a little of her wetness clears me of this deed

Nance

from a poisonous heaven I want nothing to do with or from a hell in what may secretly be a just universe, look upon your daughter now, Father, look upon my nakedness and Lizzie Borden’s and pound your chest in shame as you did with me trapped in the middle of a packed pew where you placed me so you could cry out my evil to heaven and the congregation She goes off to a life in the theatre and thereafter to an eternity in hell and I tried once more with you, my bag was packed and I was looking beautiful—I could see myself in the foyer mirror and I trembled at myself and wanted you to tremble too—and you cried Get thee behind me but Lizzie would know what to do with you, Father, she would know: your hands are as hard as ax heads, Lizzie, your hands are as hot as blood, your hands have spots upon them, sweet Lizzie, just rub them clean on me