Some nights are worse than others. Some nights, I wake up alone in the dark with a cold chill settling upon me, seeping into my flesh. Other nights I toss and turn until I wake with a half-remembered image of my brother Aaron’s face. In...

Sickness overcame Emily without warning. While we strode, arms linked, through downtown after a late movie, taking turns trashing itβ€”Emily became silent, and stopped walking. I thought maybe she’d stepped in gum, or forgot something at the theatre, but on her face grew an expression signaling...

It had rained off and on that summer night, leaving the forest dark and humid. Pushing through the wet underbrush after his friend, Noah wiped his hands on his pants, gripped his flashlight tighter, and complained, β€œBut what if the ghost is real?” Crunching through the...

The day I accidentally witnessed my physics teacher die horribly, I didn’t know what to do. I went to my classes in a daze, sat there stunned for hours, and wondered if people would think I had something to do with it if I reported...

When I first saw him standing out there on the sidewalk, I thought nothing of it. I certainly didn’t think he’d still be out there come September. I lingered at the window for just a moment, decided that the night-bound silhouette across the street was...

I don’t have a gambling problem. That’s the first thing I want known. It’s also what they all say, right? No, I’m not addicted to gambling, but I have a co-dependency issue with someone who is. I’m not the coolest guy on the block, and I’m...

A single day added onto my sentence meant the difference between a normal jail and the unending nightmare of Pembina Prison. I was supposed to get 364 days. That was the deal. But the judge didn’t like my β€˜attitude,’ whatever the hell that meant, so...

It was a cloudless, sapphire-blue sky that day. We had the camping trip planned for a month, and it took even longer than that for us to coordinate our vacations, so that we could all be there together. It was a reunion I had dreamed...

Nestled just off the Appalachian Trail, near the border of Virginia and West Virginia, where forests grew thick and pressed in on all sides, sat a small region known as Dry Branch.Β  Barely more than a collection of campgrounds, Dry Branch rarely received visitors, save...

Tommy Ihlman was only seven years old when his parents bought the house on Tamara Lane. Though it was no mansion by any stretch of the imagination, the five-bedroom raised-ranch style home seemed like a palace compared to the one-bedroom studio apartment he and his...

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