I don’t know why I chose that day to refuse my pills. Maybe because it was my sixteenth birthday and I felt rebellious. Or maybe it was because, later that day, I would be going to work with my father. My stomach lurched with anxiety, I had barely touched my food. Read more »

I hated it when my dad sent me to the basement. My hands would grow clammy and I’d shake uncontrollably. I ducked as plates and kitchen utensils were thrown at me. Read more »

I’m not mad, but I am angry. Crazy is what they call me. My family, my friends; although I don’t suppose I can call them friends anymore the way I’ve been acting. Read more »

There’s a picture on the internet that if you look at, can temporarily leave an afterimage for hours, days, weeks or months. It’s nothing unusual, just red and green squares with black vertical and horizontal lines running through them. I won’t link to it, you can find it yourself. But I must warn you first, by telling you what happened to my friend Neil. I thought it would just annoy him, at best. Read more »

It’s never nice and always a sombre affair when removing the breathing tube from a terminal patient’s throat. I never got used to it. Read more »

I was eleven when it first happened. I was eating breakfast with my sister Luna. My dad came into the house. He was frantic. I wasn’t really paying attention when I watched him remove the photos from over the fireplace and the ones on the wall and shove them into a large burlap sack. Read more »

It was weird, one day I was an only child, the next I had an older brother. My parents didn’t even warn me. Just one day he arrived and took my room and I had to sleep in the basement. Read more »

I don’t know how long I’d been asleep, but I do know I was very happy before I dropped off. Read more »

I don’t know what came over me to agree to do this. I sat in the car outside an abandoned house on the edge of town. The rain lashed down and I was shitting myself. Read more »

I don’t know what I was thinking really. I had been drinking with friends and got home drunk. I decided to open Tor and one link led to another. I ended up on a marketplace website that was selling all sorts of shady shit. I could buy my own weight in Cocaine if I saw fit, and had the money. Though something caught my interest. A posting said, “Mystery Box – Made to Order – $250”.

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That was the text from my friend James. Read more »

I was fifteen when my sister broke her back, she was twelve. She had been out playing in the neighbourhood with friends. It was only when the summer sun was setting that dad realised she hadn’t come home. I remember walking out into the front garden and peering down the street. It was that eerie silence that feels so unnatural, like before a storm. Read more »

It’s not a situation anyone wants to be in, but if the time comes, you’ll need to be prepared. Read more »

I always loved this time of year. My parents could never afford to take us to theme parks, so the best roller-coaster I ever went on was the bone-shaker that was the pride of the travelling circus. My dad was always nervous when I rode it. I didn’t understand at the time, but I do now. The whole thing was put up in a day and a few days later was dismantled and shipped to the next town. I’d swear he was more nervous watching me than I was riding it. Read more »

When I woke, I had the urge to go to the sea. It was like a thirst. Over the day my mind wandered, obsessed with the thought. Visions intruded my mind. I saw the water glittering like brilliant diamonds, the waves lapping against the shore. I was mesmerised. The image was so crystal clear, the clarity so much more intense than a normal dream. I couldn’t shift it. I wondered if it was related to the sushi I ate the day before. Read more »

I was always nervous when attending a new church, and this one in the centre of the small village I had just moved into was no exception. When I arrived for mass, I was shocked with how many parishioners were here. For such a small town, it was quite a sight. Read more »

I’ll admit this now and get it out of the way. I am a massive skeptic when it comes to ghosts and the supernatural, but that didn’t stop me going to a seance with my girlfriend and a couple of buddies. I promised her that I wouldn’t make fun of it and that I’d be on my best behaviour. Read more »

I saw an article today about some poor Indian child getting over 500 teeth removed from their mouth. It’s lucky they were able to have the surgery; some aren’t that lucky. Have you wondered why it is you don’t hear more about that happening more, babies born with distressing deformities? It happens more often than you’d expect. Read more »

The house was full of other people’s junk when we moved in. We knew that. That was part of the deal, and was one of many reasons the place was so cheap. My wife and I spent the better part of the weekend boxing up the crap and putting it in the garage. We sorted it into things for Good Will and trash. Read more »

The day before, I was given detention for putting glue on a friend’s chair. I had arrived in class before everyone else and saw a tube of epoxy glue had been left from the previous lesson. I don’t know what came over me, but I had an overwhelming urge to smear it over Dave’s chair. Thinking it would be hilarious to see him try to get up at the end of class. Read more »

When our baby daughter was born, it was a bittersweet affair. My mother had died just months beforehand. We knew she had been ill for a while. We’d made the trip up north a couple of times; my mother held her hand to my wife’s belly and felt our daughter kick. Her eyes lit up. She told us she couldn’t wait until she was born. But cancer doesn’t answer to prayers. Tilly was seven months pregnant when my mother died. Read more »

It was only when I was cleaning out some old boxes I had shuffled from house to house that I found this tape. When I saw the writing scrawled on the side in Sharpie, it all came flooding back. All the guilt that I’d hidden for all these years oozed out. I felt a heaviness in my heart that I did so well to hide from myself. Read more »