Most read stories

"Mister Germain told us he tripped and fell down the stairs" the doctor said. I thought it was weird, but I played it cool. "Is he okay?" "Yes, he is fine, he broke one arm and a few ribs, but he will be alright" answered the doctor. "I see, thanks doc" I followed the doctor to Germain's bed in the emergency ward. He was lying on bed still, the doctor gave him a prescription for painkillers and the report copy, then we got out and went back to my car.

I still don't know why my father drove away before sunrise. For years, I believed that was the part of the story that would never make sense to me. I was wrong. I was too young to understand it then, and every time I asked my parents about that morning, they either laughed it off or admitted they couldn't remember it at all. Sometimes I wonder if forgetting is easier than remembering.

Hazel Petti was the bane of our existence. By "ours", I don't just mean the students at Clara Perkins Elementary School. Everyone in town had a poor opinion of Ms. Petti, presuming they had the unfortunate luck to meet her. Opinions that ranged from mild annoyance to deep-seated hatred. If you ran a nearby business, no matter what kind, you could bet on Ms. Petti paying a visit now and again. Usually for no other reason than to search for a product or practice to get upset about.

"Lady Valtin! Lady Rudova!" Béla, who had dozed on the steps of the gazebo, lifted his head and mustered a lazy bark toward the path. An elderly man, wearing a messenger's garb, stood past the bed of daffodils and looked around in confusion. The presence of my large hound didn't seem to concern him, or perhaps he sensed that Béla was not in the mood to cause any trouble on such a nice day.

“I think we should get a fifth cat,” my wife, Mabel, told me. I looked at her, amused, as we are both cat people. We have four cats: Taco, a tortoiseshell-colored cat; Ginger, a brown cat; Gadget, a black Bombay cat; and Pingu, a black-and-white-colored kitten.

I wake with searing pain in my right arm. My left feels fine. My left hand tightly clutches my bedsheets and duvet. I squint in the silvery moonlight that flows from my white four-paned Georgian bedroom window. I can’t see much. Just the blur of the moon. I blink. My eyes are watery. My internal clock tells me it’s the early hours of the morning, but it isn’t always reliable. I feel pain. But it is feels dull, numb and distant. I breathe in. The air feels clean and pure at least.

I’ll start this off by letting all of you know, I’m not a good person. Neither are the people I work for. We should all be in prison or even worse. This isn’t a life I found myself in; this was the life I sought out. And a part of me knows we deserve everything that's come for us. Growing up, my mom and I lived in a shithole apartment on the south side. Everyone called it the Pits.

If I could travel back in time, I would have changed a lot of things. Would you? I wouldn't just do better at everything or undo certain mistakes, I would probably become your friend. Do you remember, when we were little, that we actually lived quite close to each other? Y'know when you're born here you just don't seem willing to leave. All the locals have this problem. Well anyway, your house was just a couple of streets away from mine.

“Time is a flat circle.” — Friedrich Nietzsche — - I hadn’t laughed like that in a long time. The van rattled as we bounced down the narrow gravel road, overgrown branches tapping the sides. Lexi was already filming everything with her phone, narrating in a mock-documentary voice: “Five survivors return to the place where all went wrong.” Jared howled in response, always being the loud one, and Elise shook her head, grinning, the wind tangling her curls.

Having just finished my Master’s in Classical archaeology, I decided to celebrate by trekking my way through Italy. I spent about a week in Rome seeing the usual sites and eventually I made my way south down to Sorrento.  But backpacking through Italy wasn’t just for leisure, it was actual fieldwork — well, sort of.

Behind the unsteady glow of a flickering candle, Gideon, a man of pallid skin and restless eyes, sat slumped in his painting chamber. He would spend his days withering away here as he grappled with the monstrous quiet of an unraveling mind. He was known to be a brilliant portraitist, capturing the essence of his subjects with confident, precise strokes. In his hands, even the smallest nuance became a revelation, bringing to light the hidden beauties within every visage.

I recovered from a coma I had a while back; I can’t recall the date, but I was driving back from a convenience store for groceries, and one of the overhead cables blew out and hit my vehicle, and then I woke up; it was somewhere like my own home but not really.

There's a misconception that sadness can lessen one's life. That a broken heart is the first step into the grave. We see it countless times where a true love is lost and the other follows not long after. Empty sympathies are offered, claiming the poor soul died of a broken heart. But what if I told you that broken heart was the key to everlasting life?

I usually don’t write my experiences down in journals like this. Typically, I’d prefer to just keep my unsavory memories in my head to let them rot away over time, which makes the pain easier to cope with. However, with everything that has happened to me recently, I’d feel guilty if I just let all those traumatic experiences simply be forgotten about, especially since they involve friends and people so dear to me… So, I shall tell the story of that godforsaken Airbnb and how it led me down a…

Three weeks ago, my husband and I had our first baby. I have been dealing with terrible postpartum depression ever since. The weight of being a parent is unmanageable. And in the numb state of purgatory, I haven't been sleeping. I have started connecting the dots about my young adulthood. And my family. My therapist says this is a phenomenal breakthrough, as I haven't been able to remember much of the last year with my family. So, even though I’m going to sound crazy, I've decided to recount it…

Hello there, I work for a tech company in the city that I live in. What company you say? Well for obvious reasons I am not giving that out. I can't have people showing up to my place of employment after you hear what I have to tell you. You can just call me V. You know the saying, "WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, STAYS IN VEGAS!", well this particular thing did not stay in Vegas. What is it you ask? Well, I will tell you the story of a girl’s trip that changed my life forever.

“I have good news and bad news,” my boss Chester said. If there is a more butthole clenching phrase said at a struggling company during a sudden all hands meeting, I don’t know what it is. Thing was, Chester didn’t need to say a single syllable. His slouched shoulders, pale(er) face, and hangdog expression told us the entire story. The company was going under.

A rose is a simple thing... Sweet... Loving... Kind... But it is also emotional love and pain.... This rose is black as the night, its thorns cut once touched... This rose is cold as December winds... The Enteral Rose, never ending pain of screams of those who held it once before... All end in tragical... For a simple touch, a simple scent of this rose will lead you with your own...

March 21, 2003 (I think).

A wooden totem looms in the corner, its faces twisted and hungry in the lantern light. Every year, Father carves a new one—works of pride that terrify me, though I’d never say so. “Elam,” he calls, eyes on his work, “pass me the chisel.” It’s heavier than I expect, but light in his hands. He carves with masterful ease. “Want to try?”