“Honestly, doctor, I think it’s highly inappropriate for you to show me something like that.” “If you say so. But as I explained, these pictures are a valuable way of evaluating your frame of mind. And then we’ll conclude our session here. I certainly have not so far seen anything to suggest schizophrenia or any other mental illness. These images are just tools to uncover anything I may have missed. I just want you to des...

What you are about to read was written in a notebook found hidden in the lining of the anorak worn by eighteen-year-old Jennifer Charleston, who, in 1991, was found stabbed to death with a ballpoint pen through the throat behind the trash containers outside J.J. Gittes High School. These containers had recently been chained and locked together due to incidents of vandalism. The young girl was found naked except for the co...

I can't even remember who I was before this, or what my life was like. All I know is that I love her. Everything is black at first when I wake up. Although "wake up" isn't quite right. It's more like I come alive. And my ears are the first to start working again. I hear the sounds of her. Then I open my eyes. But “open my eyes” isn't quite right either. Somehow it's as if they're already open, and they just... turn on. An...

Hey! You. Yes, you. Sorry to bother you like this, out of the blue. You don't know me and I don't know you, and I'm sure you're busy with whatever shit is going on in your life right now, but I'm in quite a bit of a jam here, and I could really use your help. I just have one quick question for you, if you don't mind, you look like the kind of person who would know. Don't take that the wrong way, consider it a compliment,...

“Oh, this is agony, sister. I cannot bear it.” As the sun hurried to hide its countenance behind the mountains in the west, I had soon realized I needed to fetch a candle or two, or I would have to put the book down for the night. And as it was, the beautiful Lady Adelaide had just welcomed the Arabian prince into her chambers. It was not my first reading of the story of the fair maiden and her handsome abductor, and I kn...

"A bit old for trick-or-treating, eh?" "Depends on the treat," she shrugs. I don’t have anything, no one comes here. That spooky house children run past? Mine. That weirdo who lives there, probably a retired serial killer? Me. I’m not, though. "I have pumpkin pie," I lie. A bet lost? A drunken dare? She follows me, sits down, her skirt slides up. She crosses her legs, too late. White panties, something dark and inviting v...

There's this spa place that Cait, Lucy, and I go to often for facials and mani-pedis usually, and sometimes a massage. It's not a big place, and we're kind of regulars there, and we know everyone there and even some of the other customers. They take guys there too, but we've never seen a guy there ever. When we first started going there, Lucy would always ask Toby to come with us. But he always said no, and after a while,...

Cait and I were visiting her mom and aunt one weekend. Her mom was doing okay by then. She hadn't started working again but kept saying she was going to soon. And she hadn't gotten her own place yet either. She said she was looking, but Cait and I both thought she was lying about that. Whenever we were there, we slept in the bedroom that was supposed to be her mom's, and she would always say, “I'll just sleep on the floor...

Natalie is a girl that lives two floors down from us, and Lucy hates her. She's an actress, or at least she thinks she is, and we all watched the one movie she was in once. Some unbelievably bad zombie film, where she's the blonde, big-boobed girl that gets killed twenty minutes in by a zombie who, of course, manages to rip her bikini off of her before he chases her through the woods, where she trips and falls in the mud,...

Our apartment has two bathrooms. Lucy and Toby have theirs, and Cait and I have ours, and theirs is bigger but ours is the only one with a bathtub, so we all use whichever one we need and is available. And none of us ever lock the doors when we're in there. I remember one morning, it was a Saturday, and I was the only one of us working that day, and of course, I was the one who had overslept. I really had to pee when I wo...

Day one. "I'm a tree!" No, you're not, lady. You're just some crazy broad with a hairbrush phobia. "And now I'm the wind!" The crazy broad, standing straight, reaching for the ceiling, starts waving her arms and running back and forth, and all the crazy people around me do the same. Even Karen, but not before she's rammed her elbow in my side, forcing me to run around like a nutcase too. "And now I'm the wind, embracing t...

Toby and Veronica have kind of a weird relationship. She only met him after we had all gotten back together again, after our horrible year, because when all that happened, she was busy with stuff going on with her own family and with moving back to England and all, so she missed that part. But we’ve told her everything, of course, and she actually thinks the whole thing is just hilarious. But anyway, she and Toby act like...

I didn't sleep much that night. Mostly because I had slept through much of the day before, but also because the three of us spent the night in mine and Cait's bed and it's like less than half the size of Lucy and Toby's. Cait and I don't mind, of course. It's great for two people who like sleeping real close, and we're often in Lucy and Toby's bed anyway, and that thing is huge. But Emma slept between Veronica and me, and...

I had a fan. She was sixteen years old, and she was a regular customer where I worked, and she's the smartest person I know, like a real genius. I mean, I bet she could debate Einstein about whatever he thought he knew, and you could ask her anything about anything and she'd know. Whether it was about fixing something on your car, or the capital of whatever tiny little country somewhere, or anything, she'd know all about...

Did you think the last one was the 'Happy Ever After' ending? Well, the joke's on you because first of all, it's not the end. Far from it. And secondly, there's no such thing as 'Happy Ever After'. There's just 'Happy For Awhile'. And then I ruin everything. Remember? But, yeah, for a while, a long while, everything was perfect again. We were all together again, like before. Living together, like before. And we had so muc...