I was done. This time I meant it. There were several times in my life where I found myself considering it, contemplating taking my trip to the other side. The last time I had called the suicide hotline, and eventually decided to give life one more try. Not this time. …
…I give up.…This is my eighth day in quarantine. More like solitary confinement, because I have lost track of time and I live alone in a bachelor apartment. I am stuck ordering groceries online, getting food delivery—even succumbed to having my brother deliver some wine for me to get me …
Who the hell needs a Private Investigator during quarantine? I was obviously grateful to have contact from any client while social distancing, even one that would probably turn out to be some kind of scam. Staying indoors had me going insane. As Steve McCroskey once said, I picked the wrong …
Samantha told me about it on our third date. We were watching a movie on her couch when I made my move to kiss her. She whipped her hand in front of my face and blocked me. “There’s something you need to know,” she said. I braced myself. Here it comes. …
Awash with terror, I lay in bed jumping and flinching at every creak. The old country house had always made such noises at night. The beams would creak, the windows would knock and the wind would howl down the fireplace. I had not always been so afraid of these sounds, …
“Can we go on the roller coaster?” “Sure we can,” Kent assured his son, whose eyes brimmed with hope and enthusiasm. Little Brian ran ahead towards the ride as his father walked quickly behind. It was one of those old, rickety coasters that won’t keep you from falling out unless …
The night of Christmas Eve 2008 is a blur, depending on how much medication I am given that day. I can avoid the nurses for a couple of hours, but not too long. I suppose you’ve heard about me in the papers or on your favorite serial killer show. No, …
Jake Thomasson pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt down, covering his hand, and wiped away the condensation from the window. It was the third time he had done this in the past ten minutes, but he didn’t want to miss seeing if any cars drove by outside. He was sitting …
Christmas has always been a hard time for me. Childhood memories of bickering relatives, drunken tirades, and hostile dinner conversations made me wince at the mere mention of the holiday. In the Christmas of 1989, I broke my collarbone on my new toboggan. In the Christmas of 1997, my brother …
The day I found my first hole was the day my best friend came back from the dead. We were in high school and stupid. Jake was his name and we liked to go out to this old abandoned house in the woods after school to just screw around. We …
I never liked going to my aunt Paola’s house. Honestly, I never liked her either. She’s a creepy bible-thumping Jesus fanatic and she’d always circle over me like a vulture. But none of that creeped me out like her house did. It was old, run-down and filled with weird religious …
For as long as I can remember, there has been a man in my bedroom window. It seems strange to say, I know, but it is true. From the earliest, fuzziest memories I have all the way up to now, he’s been there. Looking at me. In my first memories …
I’ve had this problem for as long as I can remember. In preschool, I remember being confused when they told us there were seven days in a week, because I could only ever count six. I’ve never told anyone this, not even my wife, so I’ve never really been able …
I enjoy running quite a bit. It might come off as a bit odd to say, but it really is important to me. I found my love for it back in high school, when I ended up drifting aimlessly onto the cross country track teams. Joining was less of an …
Has anyone else seen the post yet? The guy messages someone whose phone number is identical to his apart from the last digit, which is either one number up or down. I scrolled past it like any other post you see on the internet, gave it a quick chuckle and …
About half a year ago, I moved into a new apartment downtown. It’s hands-down the most upscale place I’ve lived in—rooftop access, a fitness center, a pool, huge windows with beautiful views of the city… this place had it all. My leasing agent said apartments in that building were going …
When I got the first one, I was literally seconds away from stepping onto the plane when a call from “UNKNOWN” blared from my cell phone. It was a ringtone I hadn’t heard before, one I was pretty sure hadn’t come with the phone. Normally, I wouldn’t have stopped to …
I grew up in a tiny town in Vermont. Tiny in terms of population, not size—there were huge sprawling farms and wooded areas, but almost no people. More cows than people, which is standard for a lot of small towns in Vermont. So, clearly, not the most fun in the …
The top half of Councilman Jones’ body hung by a steel cable looped around his neck and tied off to an old oak tree on one end. It was still dripping blood, bones and veins and torn bits of intestines dangling down where the legs should start. The cable was stretched through the air, over to an ash tree ten yards away from where the other half of the body was hanging by the legs.
I am currently sitting in front of my computer, scared witless. Any moment now I am going to be killed. Today a friend of mine told me a story. His aunt had taken care of him since he was a small boy, and she told him last night about how …
Addiction took our mother slowly, rocked her through it and sung her to sleep sunk deep into the mattress on her bed. When her back teeth fell out, she left them on the side of the bathtub. I was seven, and I kept them in a matchbox, the missing pieces …
I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder when I was five. I have always struggled to interact with people because of this disorder, spending large amounts of time attempting to fix imperfections around me. I would lash out harshly at people around me if they touched me or my things, and …
I had the house to myself, my parents were spending the weekend in Toronto, and I’d spent the day hanging out with my girlfriend. Up until I dropped her off at home later that evening, it was an ordinary day, as close to perfection as possible. I took my girlfriend …
Did you know that, once introduced to routine, our brains are capable of accepting it to the extent that when something changes, it doesn’t notice? The change could be small and harmless, an object there that wasn’t, or something moved to another room that you would normally duck around on …
