Dr. Benoit was only a bit saner than his patients. Volunteering on Christmas Eve felt rash to his office partners, but the veteran psychiatrist insisted. He’d received an emergency call from a healthcare protection officer at noon, and by twelve-thirty, Dr. Benoit drove his compact car five hours downstate through hoary weather, listening to past recordings from the involuntary psychiatric wing’s most precarious patients including… her . When he arrived at Gray Ridge Hospital

Dust danced between the sunbeams shining through the front window of the old shop. The smell of lavender and mildew drifted through the small space, which was filled with a maze of bookshelves, many of them pressed at odd angles against each other. The individual shelves were organized in a similar manner, each decorated with random objects—books, jewelry, herbs, vials, clocks—all ranging from magical to ordinary.   Lena had spotted the shop as she roamed the cobblestone st

Mr. Morton needed a new pair of shoes.  That’s what Grace had said in her message.  His loafers were tattered and the soles had worn...

A magnet held the snippet to Leah’s refrigerator door. She remembered the jagged hole the words left when she desperately cut the lines...

I leaned against my father’s truck, breathing in the humid city air. I didn’t live in this part of town. It was too rich for my blood....

Mass confusion greets Officers Williams and Sawyer as they stare through their tinted squad car window, but maybe that’s to be expected...

The fishermen saw the smoke first. Their shouts alerted the men in their workshops on the hill, who seized what tools might serve for...

She lived for the cool night breeze, like a cloud in the sky, free and easy, always wandering. I often wondered if she’d just wandered...

Dedicated to Louis Clinton Carrier, my grandfather          I remember running through the forest of endless trees, skylight breaking...

You forced my hand. When you modernized, flying all around the world in your airplanes, I could have mutated, evolved. I could have...

I was thirteen years old that July in 1952 that they let Uncle Buddy out of the pen long enough to come home for Mammaw’s funeral, or so...

One night when I was about 10, I dreamt I was in a library. A lady walked up. She looked familiar. She didn’t say anything but when...

I didn’t know at the time how I came unstuck. It happened on a day like any other day. I was taking a walk in my neighborhood. I do this...

The white GM box truck with ‘J Corduroy, Antiques – Collectibles’  on the side in scraped brown paint bounced us as the big tires rolled...

Which is the more difficult thing to do—love your immediate surroundings for the way they nurture you? Or hate them for all that they’ve...

1 My knees and hands were bleeding and hurt like the dickens, but I was still holding onto the seashell I had picked up from the darkened...

I paid a goodbye visit to Windburn Barn figuring a bunch of college kids would have rented it by now, but there were no cars in the...

(Content warning: this story contains sensitive material related to child sexual abuse. Please read at your own discretion.) The music...