It had been fourteen days. The painting was gone and with it my heart. Authored by an amateur it had meant more to me than any museum in the world. Each day that passed felt like a relentless excavation into my chest, letting in the outside ice and snow t…

I checked the hurt on my tongue. It was hard not to respond in kind, a struggle to not spit red-hot knives aiming for the open wound on her heart.

No.

I wouldn't do that. She's hurting enough already. Even through the internet I could feel it bleeding o…

I hate being a slave to my feelings. I don't know how not to feel something. Shit, feeling something on command isn't something I can do either.

Try not being angry

Try not to be sad.

Stop being depressed.

Don't like her.

Don't feel bad for him, h…

You know it's damn difficult to focus these days so you don't. You distract yourself with Youtube videos and Netflix, focusing on the new Dave Chappelle special and reruns of Friends or the Office. The outside world can burn without your help. It's beyond…

This wasn't our first date together but I still felt like I had to impress her. I was keenly aware that I wasn't very good looking and constantly reminded by my friends, not to mention the amused looks of strangers, that she was way out of my league. Mayb…

Story is marked as mature

Arden Waithe never wanted to be on the boat. Or any boat. His experience had taught him that sailing was misery cubed. The rolling of the ground that never stopped, rising and falling, clenched his stomach inside an iron fist even as it spun his conscious…

I followed the stream up to where I had dammed it a year ago. I was surprised it had held this long. It hadn't taken much to build, just a couple dozen rocks stacked in the right places. Looking back, I wondered why I had done it at all. I mean I knew the…

Funerals are odd ducks, aren't they? I mean they bring out the oddness in people. And odd people. Probably ducks too. I mean if the burying place is near a pond it's likely to attract its fair share of ducks, wouldn't you say? Like ponds and ducks, funera…

I wonder if I'm unwanted. Am I the problem? I've always tried to make things better but I feel like I'm trying to keep the heart beating on a dying Clydesdale. Substitute any other majestic animal you want. For me the Clydesdale carries mass and dignity i…

There are times when music reaches me. I'm open to it, vulnerable to a melody, a drum beat, or even the sound of a single note. It vibrates my exposed self and affects my emotional state. I become a mirror of the string that the guitarist plucks and the e…

The music grew louder as the pattern repeated. Drawing Adrian across the boundary that separated sleep and wakefulness, it began the collapse of the dream behind them. It wasn't an unpleasant sound, in fact he had chosen the ring because it made him think…

“Claire, did you want to give your mom something?” Tammy asked, propelling her niece forward.

The six year old approached the hospital bed, took the worn out rabbit she had been hugging against her chest, and gravely pushed it into her mother's hands. "B…

“Haha, mommy. You made a boob!” Kara Jean laughed.

Sam looked at the curved mound of sand. She supposed the rounded knoll did look like a boob. It was going to be domed roof, something that would make their castle stand out against the half a dozen other…

Simon Krapper whimpered from his cross. He was still alive. Eyes bleary from pain, from tears, from the sun, blinked and did not see. He was beyond that. Sweat rolled off his body but still he shivered.

Willum pressed a damp sponge to the crucified man's…

I awoke with a start to noise from downstairs: a series of thumps punctuated by broken glass, as if someone had tipped out the contents of my liquor cabinet.

Throwing on my camisole, I slipped through my bedroom door and crept among the darkness of the u…

Red sunburned skin scored the rounded edges of my shoulder blades, along the outsides of my forearms, across the middle of my face and topped it off with a giant patch on my head where thinning hair had failed to protect my scalp from the sun. With a gene…

I stepped of the Rail and dropped down to street level. Anticipation quickened my steps. My presence triggered storefronts auto-advertisements causing neon signs to pop into view. Swatting off a nude model offering discount massages, I crossed a street gr…

I had been there working on the same sentence for an hour when she slid into the booth across from me.

Her smile commanded my attention like I was a ship lost in a storm and she the guide light from a light house. Delightfully, I could see a garden of wh…

Wind hammered the windows and made the shutters crack against the outside of Kevin's house. Bent over a chair near the fireplace, he listened to the sounds and imagined some great beast being hunted by enthusiastic men, courageous and true. Yesterday rain…

It's a nightmare to see you. If I catch a glimpse of you without warning, my heart gives a panicked lurch, like a frightened cat trying to bolt every which way at once. Yet I placed you on the face of my phone so that anytime I use it, I see you smiling, …

When I woke, I found my body folded up around my stomach like a clam. That was where a hardening pearl of pain thundered, building pressure I couldn't ignore even while unconscious. My brain tried to get a sense of my surroundings at the same time as anot…

Stuck.

A blinking cursor mocked me from a blank screen. This writing thing wasn't going well. I wasn't ready to give up but the joy that once energized me was gone, replaced by a bitter numbness and a persistent sense of failure.

Motion at the door drew…

I like her nose.

How many times have I said that to myself? It's not the sort of compliment you can hand out. Compliments from strangers are limited to: hair, dress, and nails. Anything that varies from our unspoken rule will screw up your tenuous connec…

It was dark and I was trying unsuccessfully to sleep on the couch. Painting materials were littered across my bedroom with tarps covering the bed and the floor. Muscles ached, sore in unfamiliar ways.

In the dining room, the sliding glass door to the bac…