Adam held his wife’s hand tightly as the doctor reentered the room.“Mrs Hill?”Adam could see the lump in her throat moving up and then back down as she swallowed. “Just tell me Doc.”“You do seem to be the next one.”She hunched over, nearly throwing up onto the white tiled floor …
The doctors told me it was normal. Sometimes, babies just cry. After over a week, I’m telling you now…this is not normal. My baby isn’t crying—he’s screaming. Constantly, through the endless days and everlasting nights, and I’ve tried every tidbit of parental wisdom anyone has granted me to help him: …
He says that he visits abandoned asylums, prisons, hospitals and so on, and showcases them for others to see. I heard a voice saying. I opened my eyes and squinted, I appeard to be lying in some sort of hospital room. What the hell had happened? Why was I here? …
Across the street, there is a petite little blue house. White trim, picket fence. It’s the cliché fairy tale home you read in the storybooks. I can see it through the bars of my window. The little old lady who lives there likes to sit in an old rocking chair …
It started when a friend of mine came over, which led to us speaking at length about our childhood homes. He grew up in a different province where things seemed so much different than the way it was for me. I began the first few years of my own life …
Tara slammed the taxi door behind her with one hand and used the other to pull her raincoat’s collar tight against her neck from sharp, slanted drizzle. She found herself checking for the camera dangling by its worn striped strap in the scramble for cover. Should have brought a tote …
I should have known this would be a fucking scam. I thought as I sat and waited in the parking lot while the clock digits kept increasing. We had been waiting 45 minutes for an event that was supposed to have started. An event I knew nothing about. That’s what …
We’d been dating for only a month, Gregory and I, but It seemed as if we’d known one another for years. I was addicted to him, addicted to us. Addicted to his touch on my waist, the way he softly stroked my hair, the smell he left on the pillowcase, …
Superintendent Harlowe and I stepped into the interrogation room. It was strange performing an interview in here with one of our own, and not even for a crime. Officer Molloy was still in a sweat, his eyes raw and puffed out from crying. Poor bastard. If the report we both …
It was late one evening, as I was leaving work, and walking back to my car, that I encountered him. I could see him standing beneath a streetlight, with a gray and black backpack slung over his shoulder. He was a scrawnier guy, maybe about 5’9”, with curly red hair …
Driving late at night was never something I enjoyed. There were too many variables that could go wrong. A headlight could go out, I could get lost, maybe even fall asleep at the wheel, and worst of all break down with no one else awake to help fix the car. …
The bell in the antique grandfather clock of the rec room of the psych ward struck twelve. It was time for your appointment. That was good. You actually liked your visits with Dr. Ophelia (officially, she was Dr. Ophelia Garten, but she preferred “Dr. Ophelia”). She was a very attentive …
I first noticed it three weeks ago. I’d been playing video games with my friends, and when I went to talk into the mic, it was there. I coughed a bit, and then swallowed hard, trying to force the hair in my throat up or wash it down, but it …
Has anyone else had a hair stuck in their throat? Read More »
Yesterday… …And we’re back in five… four… three… two… one… [talk-show host] Greg, tell us your thoughts about the movie; the release is only three days after the anniversary of your wife’s death. How are you coping? Do you plan to go see it? I’m not here to talk about …
I This wall once held a chalkboard. The one behind me displayed a map of the United States with big red stars indicating state capitals. In the corner to my right, there was an old-fashioned, spinning globe – it was the type that my grandfather had in his furnished basement. …
LiVE THE DREAM These words flashed before Caitlin Neil’s closed eyes on her red-eye flight back to Los Angeles. It wasn’t home, but her so-called base. Her name wasn’t even Caitlin Neil. Nevertheless, as the Company had promised her, she had come to like both. Until now. “Hello. This is …
Excerpt from a letter received by Governor Irvish Jackson and sent by Dr. Wilford Bellenshamp on December 17th, 1985: I have seen that despite my personal attendance in the past few months to each and all inquiries in the investigation of Orin Harley that not a single report has been …
The days all started with the briefing room—a wall-to-wall palette of aged pastels and stark, hospital grayness. In the center of our little room, an oval-shaped table dominated the space with every seat filled with a tired nurse. From one of the windows, a bar of morning light often slipped …
When James and Linda Scott welcomed the arrival of their first daughter Ella Marie. Nothing seemed to be better. The pregnancy was a text book scenario. Nine months of classes, preparing a room and eagerness for her to arrive all seemed to go swimmingly. Linda was wonderful and the birth …
I stare at the corpse in the mirror. How desperately the dry, clay-colored skin clings to its skull. Rubbery. How narrow its tired eyes are, weighed down by the dark satchels hanging from them. How many broken vessels I could count beneath its sullen cheeks. A nebula of spider veins. …
Excerpt from a letter received by Governor Irvish Jackson and sent by Dr. Wilford Bellenshamp on December 17th, 1985: I have seen that despite my personal attendance in the past few months to each and all inquiries in the investigation of Orin Harley that not a single report has been …
Said to be christened Apa Moarta, or ‘Dead Water’, by a passing Romanian caravan in their native tongue, and tucked away in a far-flung, scarcely populated, staunchly isolationist region of untouched Russian countryside…beyond the grotesque, fantastical stories shared by the more ignorant and morbid of the younger generations, there’s not …
It was around two years ago that I first found the files. There were twenty of them, carefully arranged and bound up inside brown paper folders, each one stamped and dated, each a marvel unto itself and each hidden away from the world until the day that someone would unwittingly …
In light of recent events, I think it is my public duty to share what I know about this case and the person it pertains to, patient confidentiality be damned. My name is Doctor Ian Liang. I am a psychiatrist at the St. Christina Institute for the Mentally Disturbed in …
