Transcript from Session 04 of 9/22/10
Patient: Mr. Gregory Wright
Age: 25
Sex: Male
Race: White
Condition: Severely distressed, recently involved in a traumatic event (accidental homicide)
Session Conducted by Dr. Harold Hill
Time Start: 2:59 PM
Shaken to the core, foundation rattled; defenses breached, exposed, weakened, bloodied. He did it. Him walking away.
That colored boy did it. He got her new 1962 Buick out of a tight spot. Assistance not requested or desired. Walked away on her thank you. Turned his back on her. Turned back to her. Yelled, “Hey!” and she turned, faced him. He took her face in his hands, not gently, and smashed his lips against hers, rough lips, chapped and hard; bruised her lips against her teeth. Drew blood and walked away.
Continue reading “True Love At Last by Frederick K. Foote – Adult Content”
“At the end, all that’s left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been able to throw anything away…” –Nicole Krauss.
~
“Don, you have to help me. I’m desperate. Isn’t there some drug I can take, or a therapy?”
Don’s longtime friend, a successful accountant named Avraham “Avi” Goldstein, asked the question of Donald E. Cashdollar, M.D., Ph.D., an eminent physician and researcher at the Brookline Center for Neurological Research. Cashdollar put his hand to his chin as though to reinforce his thinking in response to the question. As he did so, Cashdollar shifted ever so slightly, sinking deeper into Goldstein’s living room easy chair. “Careful, Don—“
This was before we all started worrying about skin cancer. If you got burnt early doors the rest of the holiday you’d slowly turn brown. It was a holiday rite of passage, something to anticipate and dread.
There’d been talk of a bloom of jellyfish what with the warmer waters. Colin was standing in the sea up to his knees poking at them with the sharp end of his metal spade. It’s easy to say with hindsight that there was something vindictive about the boy. You read people backwards, fill in the gaps, squeeze the facts to fit what the present throws up. I can’t help recalling what I saw in the boy, seeing him with a magnifying glass burning ants in the sunshine. He’d capture crane flies in a jam jar, seal the lid and watch them flap frantically against the glass before collapsing still and exhausted. Only then would he lift the lid and slowly pull off their wings and legs before rolling the body into a ball between his thumb and forefinger. Jim says that lots of kids did that sort of thing but you still wonder.
Continue reading “Before We Started Worrying by Martyn Clayton”
Tommy let his head rest back against the sand. It was hard, cold and wet. He knew that in the dunes further up it was softer but he couldn’t be bothered with the climb for the moment. The others seemed to have gone on without him, never mind, he could catch them later. He’d take a couple of minutes to rest here, nobody would mind surely and then he’d get back on the job.
My parents probably spoke Spanish to each other when they lived together. I don’t remember. Dad never learned English, and Mom stopped speaking Spanish after they separated. On the weekends with my dad, I only needed two words. Sí, Papi. I know he said terrible things about my mother. I couldn’t understand him, but I was sure that they were “bitch,” “whore,” and, when my future stepfather came along “gold digger.” When he would pause and look my way. I’d say the only Spanish I knew, Sí, Papi. When I was a kid, I said this to appease him. When I was a teenager, it was because I agreed.
“Did you remember to leave water for Samson?”
My wife is like a teacher in the movies, the ones who make important announcements right when the bell has gone and kids are already mentally unplugged from the class and pushing through the doorway. She will tell me to turn right after we have passed the exit, or ask about the dog’s water when we are a mile from home.
“Yes, a giant bowl beside his little round bed.”
He understood how people could disappear, people had legs, people could run! But the house, the swimming pool, the Vergogna Phryne in marble and bronze…
He closed his eyes and was back.
He strolled out, past the variegated beds, past the vast sycamore and on down to the wooden jetty cut between river birch.
He stood at the water’s edge, breathing in breeze scented like warm skin. From the kitchen he could hear Sharon singing and mixing Long Island teas.
When he opened his eyes what he saw seemed less real.
John Burns, teacher of English for more than half a century at Saugus High School, close to a dozen miles north of Boston, stood in the near silence of a splendid morning beside his home atop the high ledge, looking down on the pond he had helped save. That other morning from early in his career came back as crisp as a knock at the door. He could hear the door opening. Into yesteryear he stepped:
“How many ways can you say it?”
John Burns pointed out the words he had printed in block letters on the blackboard for his sophomore English class. Central and Winter Street traffic was light at the edge of hearing, the sun did a mote dance on the windowsill. Outside, Saugus breathed the deep breaths of spring.
Continue reading “John and Andrew, Philanthropists by Tom Sheehan”
It’s raining again. I haven’t been out for weeks, but it seems every time it’s my turn in Cell 421, it’s raining. Chuck wanted to trade. He said he’d give me his lunch for three days if he could stay in Cell 421, the only one with a window. Although I do want to eat more, I simply couldn’t take away his food. Not for this. Not for staring out of a window. It’s always the same thing; rain. It’s rain and with these long, almost endless lines of people.
literally stories 