The land of misfits and lost souls. They all congregate or were forced onto this spit of land on the edge of the Iberian peninsula. An odd wasteland of scrub trees and palms hemmed in on three sides by the Mediterranean Sea and guarded by flocks of birds swooping and diving for fish, squeaking and squawking while in flight. Beauty and tranquility mask reality.

It started with an odd fiery smog r...

I found my son dead on his bedroom floor. A parents worst nightmare playing out like a surreal dream. The 911 call I don’t remember making, my younger son screaming over and over, he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead, while the paramedics and police flooded our house in a sea of red and black.

There’s no joy in my life. No hope. Prayers fall on deaf ears and I’m the shell of the man I was. A damaged, ho...

Blue steel piercing eyes hide the darkness.

Sweetness and sugary on the outside.

A street angel and a house devil.

Vengeance burning inside.

Love and hate intertwined.

Anger envelops you like a protective blanket.

Bitterness exposed.

Tentacles of pain are buried so deep that no balm will help.

No family.

No friends.

No savior.

Forsaken and abandoned.

Lost forever in a bottomless pit.

...

Sweat soaked through Christian’s turtleneck and dripped off his forehead after hours of scraping and digging. The ground muddy and cold after the storm passed through bringing a mix of rain and flurries with it. The drop in temperature making things harder and doing nothing to cool his sweaty body.

He was relentless in this pursuit, just like everything else. The Harvard education, medical schoo...

Christopher remembered the day he shipped out. It was a sultry Sunday afternoon after a tearful Mass where the entire Russell clan prayed fervently for his safe return to this Dublin parish. He could have used their pitiful moaning when he was wrecked by a gang after a pub fight, or spent months in a dingy cell for stealing or the years of hunger and beatings at the hands of his Da. All of that...

Micah Redmane always hated roller coasters. Ever since his mother took him to Coney Island when he was 8 and forced him onto The Hurricane with his older brother Angus. It was almost like she felt compelled to forget they were immigrants by doing American activities. He would have been just as happy playing stickball with his mates. But no. She had to stuff him full of grimy Nathans hot dogs and...

January 1780 was the most bitter winter that Jedson had ever experienced, and he’d been hunting and trapping in this part of the mountains for nearly 20 years. He was 50 and too old to join the local Virginia regiment to fight the Redcoats. No, Jed was much happier using his keen tracking sense to find beaver, than wasting time and musket balls on the British. Trudging through the sweet pine needl...

Crimson rivulets of blood flowed through the street like tiny rivers of wine on their way to a stinking sewer, never knowing the DNA imprinted within it. Alec Denton relives those moments every hour of every day. The shrieking sirens, tire squeals, and alarms push him over the top into an inconsolable case of PTSD, forcing him to take refuge in multiple pints of beer. The hell with no escape was a...

Iceland is a country of such vast contrasts, gorgeous snow-capped peaks, black volcanic valleys, and pristine emerald forests that would dazzle even the most jaded traveler.

All of that doesn't matter when you're gasping for breath in a rapidly shrinking air pocket under the Fjaora River. Ryder Lee Matthews's mother Ruth warned him that his lack of impulse control was going to kill him. Seems li...

Artem was bound to the hard wooden chair with stiff leather wraps around his hands and feet like a pig trussed up for slaughter. The bare room stunk of dirt, sweat, and expensive cigarettes. The wind outside the grimy window howling and dashing snow against the glass. An hour ago he was in his flat in Moscow. Now, this. His memories flooded over him in emotional waves...

Plowing through the snow...