She normally didn't speak up. She was the quiet, reserved type. The type who'd sit at the bar with her friends, and just silently listen to the conversation around her.
It was Julie that got her frustrated, though. Not just frustrated, angry. Julie was talking about the camp she'd sent her son to, one of those camps that promotes a more 'traditional' lifestyle. They advertised it as being 'moral' and 'healthy'.
The young woman had no children of her own, she was far too young for that. She worried that she was wrong for telling somebody else to raise their...
The only thing that felt worse than being left alone was being left alone at nighttime.
It was 2004 and Keri was 18; visiting Zak's downtown apartment after he finally kept a promise and picked her up to see him.
On his mattress on the floor - crumpled blankets, the two of them in t-shirts and underwear.
He got high, they watched MTV until 4am; in between he ate Cheetos and asked Keri to marry him. He always, always, talked about how beautiful their children would be. How could Keri say yes when she was 18? How could she say...
"Don't touch it", he said, "Danny is going to call."
"How can you be sure?" Marcus asked
"He said he would, now sit down and relax. We just need to wait".
The phone sat silent for a few seconds both of them staring intently at its small features, the chrome casing, the fingerprints of the thousands of times it used by others.
"He's not calling" Marcus said softly
"Dammit man, you needs to relax, he said he'll call then he'll call, just wait." Leon paced out his words to making every single syllable count. He was looking past Marcus at...
When the father arrived home to his squalid, Lower East Side tenement building, he was exhausted. He paused at the door to pose for a Jacob Riis photo, and then trudged though the entryway. The grit of coal from the furnace in the oil refinery still covered his face. This, despite the fact that we worked on the docks hauling fish. His apartment was in the rear of the building: a cramped, filthy space overlooking a pile of rubbish that the realtor had described as a “quaint fixer-upper with a partial city view.” He approached the door, removed a rat...
I took a ball, and threw it against the brick wall, to have it bounce back. I threw it again and again, to have it come back, back into my hands. I thought about my decisions, about how I threw away my future, and my life. He told me to do it. I know he did. I blame myself, not him. I threw the ball again, and heard the loud crack of it bouncing of the wall. When I hurled it the next time, I threw it as hard as I could, and rocketed back to me, through my legs,...
Wine. The only way I can escape. The bitter taste of beer and harsh sting of liquour, far too much for me to handle. So I drink wine.
The man has been watching me for a while now. The one with no face. There names for him on the internet, there are stories, and jokes.
But there are few believers.
So I keep to myself. When I'm not drinking wine, I search for answers, but that often makes things worse. The more I read, the more real it seems, although to everyone else he is just a story.
I thought...
She opened the envelope and screamed.
"He's coming to get me!" Keri shouted, "Zachary's coming to get me!"
Keri wanted nothing more than to leave her life in New York and move South to be with Zachary.They dated briefly, he proposed, she said no, and that was it. It wasn't just that she said no, he wasn't entirely serious and she was only 18.
Keri married Jack a few days before her 25th birthday, and she was completely in love with him. She never forgot Zachary, even on their wedding day. Zachary, or Zak as she called him, was her...
The Potentate surveyed his creamsicle tower smoothly. "Good good," he said in his nasally voice. Rubbing his hands together with childish glee, the balding old man dove face first into the treat and began to lap it up as his guards looked on with a mixture of amusement and derision.
The room was white, that much was certain. Its brightness was intoxicating. Two men stood over a small table, they were draped in white lab coats and held brown clipboards. Their arthritic hands jotted and scrawled down various notes and blurbs, and they occasionally looked up from their clipboard to observe what was on the table. The table was round, and it had three legs that were in contact with the white floor. At the center of the table was a small white mouse, belly up, red eyes staring into oblivion. The creature was dead. It had been dead for...
Millions. Well, it seemed like millions anyway. Millions of girls in colorful ball gowns crowded into the auditorium. Millions, and I could only choose one. They all stood in silence waiting for me. I looked over my shoulder at my smiling parents sitting on their thrones. I took a deep breath and got ready to make my announcement.
"Friends, I thank you all for coming to witness the announcement as to which of you will be my bride." I scanned the sea of young women in front of me. "That woman is..." I stop short. A girl in a white...