As kids, my sister Cassie and I didn’t know we were different. How could we? We spent all of our time in the house. Our parents never let us play outside. They said this was for our own protection. I remember clearly our father outlining all of the horrors of the world beyond our front…

It all started with a letter. Who even gets letters anymore? Who sends them? Real pen-and-paper letters, handwritten with care, slid into an envelope and dropped into the nearest mailbox. Emails are easy but to send a letter you have to buy a stamp. Who does that? I certainly don’t, and I couldn’t remember the last time…

Not many people know this, but there was once a state asylum about a five-minute drive from my house. The generically-named Illinois State Training School For Girls sat nestled in the woods halfway between Batavia and Geneva. Of course, the entire campus was demolished in the late 70s. Nowadays, a blissful upper-crust suburb overlooks the…

The following articles of information are direct transcripts from all pertinent radio communications, closed and open circuit camera feeds, and telephone interceptions involving Incident VO-003. Who I am, how I came into possession of these packets of information, and exactly where this incident took place I cannot tell you. There are certain pieces of information…

Be careful what you wish for, especially when the Grim Reaper is around. My brother has been dead for a year now. The toll his death has taken on me is immeasurable. I am not even the same person I was before he passed. It was only a month before I graduated high school. What…

Have you ever felt like you just don’t… belong? Sure, I guess I have. I suppose everybody has felt that way at some point in time. For instance, I can think back and recall a time in my life in which an AA meeting wasn’t so comfortable as people admitted to hardcore alcohol addictions, sliding…

“Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t real.” “How do you know?” “Because you can feel them when they’re close,” I said. “The goosebumps on your skin even though it’s not cold. The way the air tastes, and the dry lump in your throat. That’s how they let you know they’re about…

Earlier in my career, I was a teacher at a high school in Vancouver’s east side. When I was first hired there in the late 90s, one of my colleagues told me that it was “a jewel of a community” and “the best East End school you’d never heard of.” And she was right. I…

I wiped the sleep from my eyes. The clock across the room glared red, 3:32 AM. Who could have possibly texted this late at night? Reaching across the pillow, I picked up my phone from the end table. Apparently someone liked my face and my dry attempts at humor on Tinder. I opened up the…

How did I get on a missing persons poster?? I had heard this word “Existential Crisis” thrown around quite a bit in books, and never fully knew what it meant. But as I stood by the bathrooms in the grocery store, waiting for my sister, I looked up and found a picture of myself from…

Warning: This story contains graphic violence. When I was a kid living on a small farm in Minnesota, my family had a dirt bike. Actually, if I remember correctly, it was really just a small motorcycle. My (incredibly short) mom used to ride alongside my dad’s chunky Goldwing Honda, but as she got older she…

A few days ago, the stars aligned and I went out on a date with a guy. It went well, and by the end, we were swapping dating horror stories, (of which I have plenty). I shared a pretty intimate story about a past experience with an ex, which was when it got serious. He…