Stories tagged alcoholism

Full Tilt Boogie

17731773 views55 comments11 fav

Your tongue is enlarging... wait, it’s growing hair. No, wait, it’s planarian flatworms, an earthy taste oozing down your throat. A terrible itching spreads from your solar plexus, under your skin everywhere. You know if you scratch even once, you won

The Spirit Upwelling

18121812 views11 comment11 fav

Too late, I feel a bite under my left heel, but before I can look, I blunder into Robert and Paul rolling across the bedroom floor. They knock me over like a bowling pin, and I grab Robert’s hands and try to pull them from around his father’s neck.

Joe for Town Council

13381338 views00 comments11 fav

“I heard your dad took out the Dairy Queen drive-thru,” said Pat.

Blame It on The Good Stuff

969969 views00 comments00 favs

That was nearly two years and a thousand smiles ago.

The New Me

22 views00 comments00 favs

It was Saturday night and I'd spent all afternoon gloating at a meeting about how well my recovery was going. Now all I wanted was someone to hump. It was sad, but that's what it came down to. It was an improvement from the time when I would have gone…

Minor Damage (Part I)

550550 views1414 comments77 favs

Mommy Nate is yelling. An ember pops onto his booklet and burns black holes in the blue and yellow pages. Carla turns and knocks the paint thinner onto the floor. Thin rivulets of fire run across the rug, up to the couch where Petey is napping and around

Minor Damage (Part II)

457457 views99 comments77 favs

It begins with a deep purple zig a dark blue zag. She works the line over and over until the pastel crumbles and creates the texture she is after. Flames sharp and black surround the scar. A red spray of anticipation. The lonely sound of a basketball thum

The Strongest Girl in the World

14161416 views00 comments00 favs

At the edge of the forest, his sister began to complain about how everybody—their mother and father and all of her friends included—hated her. It was exasperating, the light she sometimes put herself in. The fact of the matter was that she received more

Silent Night

10971097 views22 comments22 favs

The church of the self.

You Don't Listen

10421042 views00 comments00 favs

What time is it? 3:47. Adam says before 5 is too early. Maybe he should stay home with our daughters once in a while. Let’s see him make it to 5 o’clock. It is Friday. I’ll mix it with orange juice. He never notices. I better check on Debra.

LAST CALL: A Memoir

13181318 views22 comments22 favs

We see o­nly the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material . . . when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of things…

Ghosts

11631163 views11 comment11 fav

"Yes. It was moving, and not along the ground, either. We were. . . looking toward the cemetery, and the ghost or whatever was clearly visible. . ."

Check

885885 views00 comments00 favs

My toes curled together under the pathetic rag of a bedsheet, the frost creeping in through the two-inch deformity of the window on the left wall. I was tempted to sneak a glance at them to insure that they weren't black, but then decided that I'd…

Class Poet

6464 views55 comments55 favs

Mom drank all her life. In fact, she had been drunk all her life. She blamed me for her drinking. “You were a tough little delivery. Thought you’d kill me. If the doc hadn’t fixed me up with a shot of brandy I wouldn’t of survived. Then you were such a li

Saturday Morning

22 views00 comments00 favs

The piecing together of last night riles you up from the ground hands on face wipe the grime off your onion skin move jaw rub the sharp pain on the side of your neckscratch your oily scalp readjust your bra and luxuriate in the low-hanging sun.