The Ritual of first night ( Read more... )

Johnny kicked nervously at the sandy grit on the edge of sidewalk, blowing into his hands and rubbing them together, he stared at his feet. March was a miserable time of year this far north, all dirt and melting snow. Everything looked grey and bleak. The park was situated down by the river, well treed and poorly lit just like Sam had said it would ( Read more... )

You see a lot of weird stuff as a barber, people tell you their secrets, they confess their sins. Like a priest or a bartender or any other type of amateur therapy job, barbers hear and see some weird stuff, after 45 years in the business Jake had figured he'd seen and heard just about everything, that is until he met the stranger from down south ( Read more... )

TW: sexual assault, domestic violence.

( Read more... )

Nolan fidgeted nervously rubbing the penny between his thumb and index finger. His four year old patience always wore thin by this point in the morning. It wasn't his fault really, or at least that's what Grandma always said, boys will be boys and boys like to run and play, not sit and listen to momma play piano all day. It felt like all day anyway ( Read more... )

Cheddar strained to push himself into his 26th push up just as Provolone walked into the room, as his friend waited nervously by the chewed out hole in the wall, leaning gently against a set of old, frayed copper wires ( Read more... )

Our story begins with our heroine bravely stocking the shelves at the local Valu-Mart, on the midnight till 8am shift. Her neon purple and black dreadlocks pulled back into a bun that somewhat resembles a moldy blueberry bagel, her septum piercing wiggles as she sighs dramatically hoisting package after package of Valu-brand toilet paper over her ( Read more... )

Earle sits in his tattered old lawn chair, you know the kind, with those maybe-plastic, maybe-cloth woven straps on a cheap metal frame, the kind that your pudgy aunt Martha fell through last summer at the family reunion? Yeah one of those pieces of shit. Every day Earle sits on that chair on the left side of his wrap around porch on the corner of ( Read more... )

She cradled the orb in her arms, nurturing it as her own, it wasn't hers of course, just some shiny she'd picked up along the way while he'd been sleeping, he was always sleeping. Its' colors were a deep piercing blue with swirling white and a spattering of browns and greens. This would be her new toy, something to play with while he slept ( Read more... )

The ringmaster approaches the podium, stage left stands a quiet unobservant young boy with cokebottle glasses sliding down his nose, he tugs impatiently on a long yellow rope causing the curtain behind the ring master to bounce ever so slightly, "knock it off Johnny, no one's paying attention to you standing there fidgeting with the curtain," a ( Read more... )