I hate the water. Always have, always will. Oh, sure, I’ve swum in pools and jumped off diving boards like any other person, but I have never once allowed my feet to leave the ground at a beach or lake. Something about not having solid ground to stand on freaks […]
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
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I wish I had my big sister’s hair. Hers is soft and light. Touching her arms is like touching peach fuzz. When she sweats her skin looks like melted butter. It’s not fair. My hair is thick, wiry, and black as spider legs. I’m only thirteen and I have thicker hair on my arms and legs than most boys on the Tanglewood Junior High football team.
You’d finally done it. After weeks of digging around and bugging the lady at the front desk, you’d found it: the elevator code for floor zero. You make your way to the nearest elevator, trying your hardest to contain your excitement. You’ve been told so many rumors about the place that you weren’t sure if they were even fiction. Some said it was a dark room full of spiderwebs, some said it was full of old mannequins, and some said it was just a storage floor with nothing interesting to see.
The worst thing I’ve ever done in my life happened about twelve years ago, when I was a sixteen-year-old kid living in Cleveland, Ohio. It was the early fall, when the leaves were just starting to turn orange and the temperatures were starting to fall, hinting at the freezing chill that was only a few months away. School had just started, but it had been going on for about a month now, so all the excitement of going back and reuniting with old friends had been replaced by the realization that we were captives in a place that only wanted to load work upon us. Understandably, my friends and I were all eager to do anything that might remind us of the worry-free, responsibility-free days of summer.
In the heart of a second-growth piney-woods jungle of southern Alabama, a region sparsely settled by backwoods blacks and Cajuns—that queer, half-wild people descended from Acadian exiles of the middle eighteenth century—stands a strange, enormous ruin.
It was the year 1992. Peter Ivankov’s life was never the same since then – firstly, because his home country had gone through a massive transformation following the dissolution of the Soviet Union the previous winter. Secondly, 1992 was the year Peter went blind. Early that year, Peter’s mother began
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There’s this painting my wife loves, called “Death and Life”, by Klimt. I don’t know what she finds so fascinating about it. I made all the right noises when she showed me her beloved framed print when we were first dating, “oohing” and “ahhing” and making up some bullshit about warm
Ever since I was young, my father would warn me to never open my mouth about my problems. “Nobody will understand you,” he would hiss, putting the fear of whatever he feared in me. “Nobody will care because they haven’t gone through it.” So, I shut my mouth. I never
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“Damn, Valentine shit already?” I asked my friend Gabriel as we were walking inside a Wal-Mart post Christmas. “Yeah, bro, and it’s still December. It’s like they’re completely ignoring the months in between the other months that have major holidays.” “True, true, annoys the shit out of me though, you
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I was pretty tight for cash, and yeah, slightly drunk too. I entered that old hotel building on a bet with my friend Tommy, for an amount of money I’m ashamed to even say. The story goes, that back in 1958, the hotel owner, who worked day in and day
We’d been doing civics for the past month. I was teaching second grade at Witherspoon Elementary, struggling to teach the meaning of Gettysburg and the Battle of Princeton to a bunch of eight year-olds, especially without giving a diatribe about the evils of slavery and making them bring that shit
I noticed it almost immediately. The phenomenon began one day while I was still an undergrad in college. My alarm went off, and I grudgingly let it ring for few seconds before ending it, yanking the covers off my body, and pulling myself out of bed. I had only gotten
“I don’t want to talk. Really. I just want to go to bed,” she said, taking out her earrings. She hustled by him without making eye contact, tossed the mail on the dresser, and lightly brushed him away. He reflexively glanced at the scattered envelopes. Bills. What’s that one from
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I was 12 years old when I met my mother. We just moved into a new neighborhood. Autumn leaves began to dribble as my dad started to unpack our things. My brother, who was 4 at the time, was playing with his “Imaginary Friend” who he supposedly just met when
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Call me Bramwell Alden. I can’t give you my real name because my prick of a family is too well known. My ancestor William Alden came over on the Mayflower, and my grand aunt has been bragging about it since the day the boat landed on Plymouth goddamn Rock –
Thomas sat in the courtroom, wringing his hands anxiously. His eyes darted from the judge, to the jury, to his father. He hated his father. He needed to be thrown in prison. It’s where he belongs. Where he’s always belonged. They called Thomas up to his place as a witness.
“Did you get my story written?” Christie asked as she came through the front door just after two. Normally she wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours but apparently the schools had let out early that day for something to do with testing. She didn’t care enough to fully
I can still hear them. In the stillness of the night as I wait for the grasp of sleep to take me, the sighs start flooding in from all directions. At first, they’re so low that I think I must be imagining them, but gradually, they get louder. Eventually, the
“The Scornful” By Brandon Gulling Latvia SSR, 6 January, 1942 Johannes Wulf, M.D. My stomach aches and churns from hunger. I feel the acid slowly eating away at the lining, like lava carving a canyon through a mountain. Even the rats feel the pain of hunger, violently picking at
It all began the night the man in the black coat came to Graybark Drive. Looking back, Harrison Naylor might have found that odd, because it was also the night that the Collins’ house burned to the ground. But no, when he peeked through his blinds that night, all he
Day 0 As much as I despise having to type this, I’ve since come to terms with my wife’s suggestion. When I first told her of my assignment in the Arctic, she refused to let me leave. With time, she came to accept it, under one condition of course. She
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Have you ever wondered, “what would it be like to be dead?” I’ll tell you. It’s not fun. My name is Seraphina Kightin, and this is the story of my death. Two years ago, I was murdered on November 21, 2015. To me it felt like the best day of
She gave him the key as soon as he had walked in the door. It had been in a small box, wrapped up with a bow. He tried not to show his concern as he was acutely aware she was waiting expectantly for him to say something. “Well, what do
