This is an unfinished story, about a man who will never read these words.

It is a man who didn't have a home, a car, a job, or any one of the comforts that we enjoy and discard carelessly on a day to day basis, a man who walked and slept with the clothes on his back and a guitar in his hands.

His name was John - or at least, that's what he claimed ( Read more... )

We will always be different, you and I; I know this now ( Read more... )

This is what he does, night after night, his face pale against the illuminated screen.

He browses his feeds, his forums, his games, and he searches. For criminals, he would say; for prey, you would think, if you watched the way his eyes devour the words hungrily.

He looks for the poster that needs to put in his or her place, for the person who is ( Read more... )

Three friends - a CIA officer, a Green Beret, and a army psychiatrist - are sitting by a campfire (or maybe they walk into a bar). They've been drinking a bit, and have reached the stage where they compare feats of bravado, and someone asks which of them is the best.

The CIA spook says, "I gather vital intelligence and do covert operations in some ( Read more... )

The soft 'hi' we exchange as we meet reminds me of something I can't quite place; only much later do I realize it's the greeting my parents give each other as they wake up in the morning ( Read more... )

My lady,

It is with a weak will and unsteady hand that I write this letter, but even I understand why it must be done. I am not strong enough to meet you face to face, to see your tears and take your anger and pain, but I can provide, at least, the shadow of an answer. This, then, is my compromise: I will leave this publicly and hope that, out of ( Read more... )

So, lately, I've been picking up girls from Craigslist.

Last Friday, I was scanning the site carefully, looking for my next, ah, friend. It's not a perfect method, of course, because even the most interesting postings have terribly boring, ditzy people behind them, and that's not even mentioning the fake pictures and photoshopped images. After we ( Read more... )

We had one of those wonderful marriages where every little thing was meaningful to us - the first time that I told her she was beautiful was in the hallway of our old high school. She didn’t believe me then; she thought that I was saying it just to be nice, or worse, to tease her, but I meant it honestly. It was my fumbling way of telling her that ( Read more... )