“What the heck are you doing, Connie?” Hank hissed at her. “Put that change back on the table!”

“That waiter was rude and sloppy,” Connie hissed back. “I’m just taking our tips back. He doesn’t deserve it!”

Hank sighed and gave up. He and Connie had decided to get lunch in town at Barnie’s Diner since they always served a really good seafood chowder on Tuesdays. Well actually, it had been Co...

“Why don’t you give it a chance, Mir?” Mom asks me, as if she cannot see me clenching the tablecloth in my fists, my knuckles turning white. A restlessness wells up in me, and I want to flap my hands wildly to dispel it, but I know Mom disapproves. So I gnaw my lip instead.

“I don’t WANT to.” I say, but it comes out stilted and angrier than I meant. I am barely holding in a barrage of “no”s. I try...

I walked across the teakwood deck to the table at the railing. The deck table is my favourite place to take dinner. It has the perfect view for admiring a summers evening. Tonight will be no exception. The evening is warm and the wind is barely a whisper. I set my plate and cup down on the table and sit in the chair facing the lake. Always the best seat in the house. My view looks over abou...

“Come with me if you—“

“If I want to live? Okay, Arnie.” Lydia had heard some lame pickup lines before, but…

“Well, yeah, how did—“ Gunfire. Owen threw Lydia to the gound as hundreds of bullets exploded chunks of the concrete parking structure currently saving their lives.

“Who the hell are you?” Lydia asked.

“I’m Owen. Owen Acoin?” He waited for recognition, but nothing. “The Skipper sent m...

Egg

Michael Strom was born on February 15, 1945. His mother, Johanna Strom, was loving and attentive. She tried her hardest to raise him to be a smart, kind, and gentle man. But his father, Ernest Strom, was a bitter, miserable, drunk man. Ernest openly abused his wife in front of his son. Both physically and emotionally. His son was destined to be just like him.

Growing up, Michael tried to en...

They came and saw me a year ago, I figured they just didn’t want me so they left. That’s what a lot of people do, no one wants a twelve year old, they only want babies. ‘I just don’t think we’re ready for a teenager’ is all I ever hear. But these people didn’t say that. They smiled at me, started talking to me, and I thought maybe I actually liked them. But they went and talked to Mikey -one of th...

It started as all bad days do in the morning after a blacked out night. What I didn’t expect is the intensity of the pounding in the place I once called a head. My mouth felt dry, I felt dry; can someone become a mummy while still alive? What time was it?

As I slide my hand across the bed to find my phone, I find a hard surface instead, one that shouldn’t be in the way. My bed wasn’t against the...

Today is the day…my 50th birthday. Since I was 25, I stopped looking forward to birthdays, but this one in particular I have been dreading the most. I have officially lived half a century, half a lifetime in fact! To be honest, it’s a little frightening to think about. I remember when I was a teenager, I thought 50 years old was ancient. Am I ancient?

I sit in front of my vanity mirror, staring a...

Not much sways me anymore.

My uneasy heart,

in pieces on the floor.

Nightly trips to places

on a distant planetary shore;

though I never wake

in the same place,

I was the day before.

Terrified, by what lurks

beyond the next door.

That’s why I'm spilling

my senses,

just to sigh away the sores.

Still, changes plague

what my future has in store...

because too much,

yet somehow nothing

m...

I used to believe

A full moon begat

An empty sky.

Upon completion

The slate wiped clean.

Start afresh

The cycle renewed

We begin again.

The moon is rarely noticed

Unless she is full,

When she is her most complete,

Her most spectacular.

We also remark when

She is absent,

Our world darkened,

The night sky emptied.

When she fades into nothing

Or gestates toward fullness

We think little of h...