White. That was Jim’s world. The walls were white, the floor was white, the orderlies wore white. It was an upsetting, all-encompassing white which left him feeling a little dizzy. And there wasn’t much for him to do besides be absorbed in it. Occasionally, the sounds of crying or screaming
Madness and Mockingbirds Read More »
She’s only a little dead. I can feel the warm. The bits inside, for sure, are hot. There was a lot more blood than I expected; more than when I done either the mouse or the chipmunk. Maybe it’s because of the babies. I learned in school that a lady
She fell in love with the cottage as soon as she saw it. We’d driven for an hour, and, at first, my wife had been the most unsure of us both, but once we were standing in front of it, she was sold. It was a sultry summer’s day, the
Between the Lilies Read More »
I found myself having to make a massive effort to be able to see though the dust that sailed through the air. With each tiny sand grain hitting my cornea it became harder and harder to see anything clearly. I held onto my mother’s hand tightly and not too long
Dreams of Blueish Tears Read More »
It was January 27, 1977. I was on my way home from work in my 1968, half lime green, half rust brown GMC truck. It was lime green when I first bought the thing five years ago; I swear it lasted a mere twenty minutes before the rust started to
The Woods Past Dark Read More »
A silver grey car drove me by, allowing water from the newly formed puddle beside the sidewalk to splash up at me. This left my pants soaking wet and the side of my face splattered with murky rain water. Normally, I’d let out a load attention craving sigh, curse the
To Befriend the Diseased Read More »
He couldn’t see, or so I thought. How wrong I was. Nothing seemed wrong when I met him. My parents said it was normal for kids to have imaginary friends, but he didn’t seem so imaginary to me. Besides, if he was, then why can I still see him all
The Man Who Couldn’t See (My Guardian) Read More »
The elevator rumbled and shook as it descended. I could hear the massive gears grinding into place as they lowered the cage-like box deeper into the earth. I felt my heart racing in my chest as the humming of the generators grew more and more distant, and the light from
The Doors of Stone Read More »
My dad built his dream cabin in the southern Ozarks back in 1991, a reward to himself for achieving early retirement. The damn thing took nearly a year to build, what with the county having to actually build the road to my family’s property at the top of a small
There’s this thing – a phenomena, really – called the “Mandela Effect.” This lady, Fiona Broome, coined the phrase back in 2010 and it’s some bat-shit crazy stuff, lemme tell you what. See, Fiona Broome swears up, down, and sideways that Nelson Mandela died some time back in the 1980s
Mr. Flysuit and the Mandela Effect Read More »
Dead leaves crunch underneath, noises of crickets joining in to create a small melody for my walk back. The air while cool, is yet dry tonight, no wind in the trees. The fenced neighborhood, dark, lonely, and quiet; though, that being due to the late hour. My feet carry me
Nobody Saw It Coming Read More »
Home again after a difficult but very rewarding day of convincing people not to give up on the gift of life. Richard Burner often had to deal with pretty stubborn suicidal people, but so far he had always been able to open their eyes to see all the beauty in
About eight years ago, my great-grandfather, Everett, passed away. Initially, you might say, that doesn’t seem like something worth writing down, but you see, he was 126 years old. Guinness World Records had published him for the last nine years as the oldest living man on the planet (that could
The Last Pine Barrener Read More »
For the thirtieth time, they pulled the book from its place on the shelf. He blew a year’s worth of dust from the cover before smiling at her and leading her to the sofa. They sank into the tired cushions, wiggling closer to each other as together they pried the
June 30 The void that my parents have left behind ever since their death has slowly begun to consume the whole of me. I had seen it happen with my own eyes – my parents inside a car being crushed under an oil tanker, followed by a colossal explosion. Nothing
It’s a writer’s worst nightmare. The moment when you just couldn’t come up with anything, absolutely nothing, when the well of creativity dries up. It’s frustrating. Us writers call this menace writer’s block, it preys on us from the dark reaches of our minds; it is the killer of imagination.
During the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I had a job at the local cinema. I’m 26 years old now and well on my way to other, more important things in my life, but this is the first time I’ve told this story. Mind you,
Turn back now, before your past is dug up like old bones and your soul is consumed in fire. I blinked once, watching the faded trees, like twisted, gnarled fingers reaching up to caress the sky, roll by the carriage window. I rubbed my forehead; the thought must have come
The scratching of graphite on paper. The short, whispered phrases. The gentle, distant ticking of a muffled old grand-father clock. These are my recollections of my time talking to Thomas Berkley in January, 1980. I was called in to see Mr Berkley at short notice. My time in Boston was
There are two main routes that one can use to get from Napa to San Francisco. The first curves around through Emeryville, crosses over the Bay Bridge, and eventually arrives in the Financial District. Every mile of the journey is well-lit, populated, and dotted by familiar signs of civilization. The
Four years in the army, and not once did I hear an order from anyone ranked above a Major(O4). Now I’ve been at the Dalton Power Station for two months, and I’ve already received three phone calls from James Mattis, the US secretary of defense. It seemed like a mundane
Sunset had fallen on the countryside, and the warmth of the day was fading with each passing moment. Vespers of an autumn breeze whispered through the fields, setting the amber stalks of corn into a somber dance… yet with each swaying step, two interlopers were revealed, standing stark and defiant
Mad. We were all called that by the “normal” people who lived outside our white padded walls. Believe me, none of us chose this life. It was almost as if we were looking through a mirror and that image of ourselves was moving on its own. We couldn’t stop it,
A Shadow of My Former Self Read More »
For William, it all started out as nothing more than a strange way of impressing a pretty girl, and he certainly wouldn’t have been the first in the long history of men who defied all semblance of logic in the name of simple courtship. Jen was not the sort of
The First of the Three Read More »
