970 1 2
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I was an alcoholic for ten years, starting in my early twenties and continuing into my thirties. Then finally, after many attempts, I got myself straightened out. My son's birth finally did it for me. It wasn't like a switch flipped in the delivery room…
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83011
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The old-timers at the Working Man’s Club wear a sheen of indifference every Wednesday night. Beneath the wafting, cresting mountains of burning cigarettes smoke, the train-track rattle of dominoes chipping at the dark wood tables in the corner, the consta
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78211
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As we stood there, my hair slung over his shoulder like uncooked pizza dough, I updated my wish.
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99322
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At a candlelit table near the back of the restaurant, Jack and Lois greeted the waiter as he delivered their drinks, a diet coke for him, and for her, a vodka and cranberry. He apologized for the slow bar service and promised to return in a moment to take their…
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15731410
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I can never tell if he’s drunk or using some sort of substance or if perhaps his brain just doesn’t fire at the pace that we have come to accept as normal.
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95421
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Life to her had come to resemble one of those mazes you find in a puzzle book, inscrutable except by those with exceptional IQs. Mary would run her pencil down one path in search of the passage that might penetrate to the exit, then another, but the paths
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977112
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The water lapped against the sides of the small boat, their rhythm all that I could think of. Sweltering rays beat down, frying my flesh, the insipid salty breeze that occasionally stirred my only relief from it. Gulls circled overhead, like white ravens,
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102162
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George was the biggest coward alive. But he was too afraid to admit it. But that therein was his cowardice. He couldn't face the truth. He couldn't face his weakness. It made him uncomfortable, the thought that he might need to change.
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86211
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Suddenly she feels the urge to go, the TV lounge, with its flat Ikea furniture and black sofas where two young men glowering sprawl, is unknown territory. She can imagine those eyes, mouths, hands all over her. One of them looks up and there is an unspoke
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71600
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She hears me, acknowledges me. She knows I’m bound each day, unable to make my voice heard. “It’s regrettable,” she mumbles...
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2800
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I gave my body to him on a bed of straw.
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11800
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ong after song. Note after note. Swig after swig. The set comes to an end. There is a collective sigh of relief that no more energy need be expended and one of disappointment that the night is coming to a conclusion.
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87411
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Joseph and his little brother, Kevin, were there again. Kevin was too small to understand what had happened yet. He would usually just go off, running around the statues and playing with the wreaths; the last time they'd visited he climbed a tree and broke one of the…
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101142
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The first and easiest reason was that he never hit me. Well, if he never hit me, then how could it possibly be abuse? Never mind the threats to stab me in the neck. He was only angry. He really didn't mean that. Never mind he restrained me, or cornered me
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90511
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It was a mildly windy day of the working week in the financial district of the city—the bright morning sun was out—when a security guard was called to the fifteenth floor to deal with a disruption.
“This way.”
Someone pointed to a desk. At the desk
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