The Way We Were - Short Story Excerpt Three

Everything around me feels fast and thoughtless. I'm thoughtless, too. I can’t feel my body anymore. I’m so grateful. When I can still feel my body I can still hear my keeper, and when I can still hear my keeper, I can't dance like this.

The Rolling Stones "Under My Thumb" is playing on the jukebox, and it's my favourite song forever from now on. My body that I can see beneath me, but that I can't feel, is moving with a harmonized surrender.    

My feet move in shuffles from side to side. My head goes up and down, back and forth. When I lift it up towards the ceiling, I can feel that my face doesn't look how it usually does. I'm not putting anything on. There is a rawness that surrounds me. I notice my hands floating all around. They surprise me every time because I'm not instructing them to go anywhere. They just move.

Everyone I know thinks I'm a good dancer, but I'm not. I'm just a good performer and I've always been very good at faking. Before this summer when I'd dance, I was moving how my keeper told me I should move, how she wanted other people to see me move. It wasn't fun at all, but I used to take comfort in following her orders.

That's my secret.

Well, that's our secret. Nobody knows she exists, except her and I. She's gone now. She’s far away. I told her and her liquid sounds to leave me alone this summer. At first I was worried that I wouldn't know what to do without her. That I'd keep talking to no one in particular, a parrot in sweat pants, asking "Will I be okay?"

All the tired horses in the sun, how'm I supposed to get any thinking done?

Monster - Short Story Excerpt

The following is the beginning of a story called Monster.



I am a monster.
This is how I was born, and I can do no more to change it than an old dog can trade his worn, dirty fur for the clean feathers of a baby bird, solely because he dreams of taking flight. But the difference between myself and most others like me is that I don't wish to be any different. I know who I am, to an exacting degree, pitying not myself for being this way, but those whom are unaware of the truth in me, to whom I will never explain it.
My James.
I have never known true intimacy, and I have no desire to. I can only really breathe when I am alone, and the clear, hard blue sky goes beyond and above me to infinity, mirroring the lonely seas, and I can see as far as it can, which is nowhere and everywhere at once. Sometimes, in these nowhere and everywhere moments, I think of James, the man who loves me, the man who will marry me next month, and I feel cruel. He does not know that I was born wearing the blue uniform of a prisoner inside myself, and that everything else feels like a costume.
Especially that white dress.



I come from Texas. My accent, barbed with the softness only sharp-shooters can imitate, sounds different in my own head, when I am alive in thought, than it does when I speak to him, dead in conversation. I don't understand where the pretense comes from, but I am being dishonest with my voice when I speak, except within the confines of my own skull. My real drawl, is lower, has more gruffness, and a depth that I don't share with anyone, guarded like the jewels at Buckingham Palace.
My hair is golden, especially when the sun's hot rays press themselves upon it. My eyes are blue, very blue, like the hard sky, but haven't the vacancy, the emptiness, that many light eyes are cursed with. No, mine are soulful. Perhaps too soulful for a woman that has been so selfish with herself. James calls me his Angel, but I am not an Angel. I just look like one.
I am beautiful and I know that, and so since I was a small girl I have always attracted men like flies to honey. And I have never wanted or needed them; my aloofness making me even more a prize to be won. I have felt guilty, being pretty like this, when so many girls need this beauty more to get what they so desire; the love of a good man.
My James has loved me, intimately, since the moment he laid eyes on me. I have long wondered if that was because somewhere he knew, though not consciously thought, that I could never love him and attracted to that calamity, threw himself into me wholeheartedly.
It is not easy though. It is not easy being monstrous.



As of late there has been a magnetic conflict, newly born, and that I feel uncomfortable having within me. The pull being that I should keep my true nature a secret, the push being that I should not sentence another human being to a lifetime tied to a mutant. These thoughts have surfaced before. But the pull, my nature, would win over the repellant, collapsable space between, and the two sides would snap together, in connectivity, the contrition buried often for a long while.
But as the big day approaches, I find myself studying James when he is asleep. He looks so helpless. More helpless than I could ever be in the most dire of situations, and this helplessness radiates off him in his sleep; unconsciously. Looking at him, I feel like a monster in a fairy tale; hairy, yellow-eyed, mute, grotesque, blood-thirsty, and despicable. I imagine myself, with my new bone-crushing heaviness, sitting on him until he suffocates. Murdering him, the monster feels no regret, only victorious for having made the kill. When I wake from these spells I am horrified. The guilt I feel weighs so heavy upon me, but I am unable to stop these feelings. Some nights, I feel so guilty that I cannot share a bed with the helplessness and sleep alone on the wood floor beneath him.
I don't know that I can live a life haunted by such guilt; not for who I am but for who I earnestly promise to be.
He is taking me on a getaway this weekend, "some time alone before the wedding," he told me.
I have told myself that there, I will decide if I can be an impostor for the rest of my days.

Tragic Hero - Short Story Excerpt

“So, since...Rosemary? Was it Rosemary?”
“What’s she got to do with this?”
“No, nothing. Just since her, no serious women?”
“No...no, not really.”
“Wow.”
“Why are you always saying ‘wow’, kid? It makes you seem dumber than you are.”
“Oh, sorry. I mean...I find that hard to believe.”
“Why? I’ve never wanted to be committed.”
“Not to anyone? Not ever?”
“No. I get committed, goodbye freedom. Why would I want that?”

She looked away and I went back to eating my dinner. Then when I thought the conversation was over, she got back to talking.

“I was at Starbucks this one time, this reminds me of that. You know how Starbucks has those quote things on the back of their cups? Well, there was this one quote, and it went like....it went something like, ‘the irony - ’ irony... is that right?”
“Could be. I don’t know what you’re talking about yet.”
“Oh...okay, well, I think it’s irony... anyway, ‘the irony of commitment is that it’s ultimately freeing.”
I laughed real hard at that one. “That would be ironic, yes.”
“Don’t laugh, this is good! Just listen, okay?”

I nodded my head. I always did listen to her, more than I did other people. Don’t know why.

“It said like, ‘when you commit to something, it frees you of the doubts in your head’ and that, ‘all the doubts you have in your head are just your own critics that think you aren’t strong enough to be committed, so they shoot you in the foot by not letting you try in the first place. And commitment frees you of that, so it’s freeing...in the end.’ I don’t know, something like that. That always stuck with me. I think it’s true, maybe.”

When she gave me that spiel, she looked real hopeful. But it was this terrifying hope around her eyes. Really, it scared me. I hadn’t seen that kind of hope from anyone in so long that it really rattled me. I had to set her straight.

“You know why you only see shit like that written on Starbucks cups?”
“No, why?”
“Because the only people stupid enough to believe that bullshit are the same idiots who are willing to pay five dollars for a Goddamn coffee.”

She laughed real hard at that. But when she laughed it was a sad laugh. She looked like she’d been woken up from a dream.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re probably right.”
“I am right.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“That settles it.”

She smiled at me, with this sad smile. I wondered then if maybe she wanted to stay dreaming. 

“So you want to get the cheque, kid?” I asked her.
“Sure,” she said. “Sure.”

Die Happy - Personal Essay Excerpt

You’re more comfortable that way, making longer stories short. You want to arrange things, draw conclusions, give them an introduction. You want to take pieces of your life and structure them on pages. You want to take people and make then permanent. You put them in black and white type. Once they’re concrete it’s easier for you to accept.

You don’t share, not easily. You’ll write your most intimate thoughts for a stranger to read, but those closest to you don’t know those that live inside you. You want to emancipate those inside, you want to let them live outside, for other people to see, to move them from your haunted house that no man has dared explore. The nakedness feels more comfortable when it’s one removed.

These words on this page are glowing because the truth in them resonates so deeply in you. You want to die happy. You think that’s the only way to live. That’s the only logic you can assign to life, the only goal you have.

How do you do it?

What Life Was For - Short Story Except

It was their first night in the house alone since Grandpa left. The remains of the man he used to be were scattered around them; a newspaper he could no longer read, a television he could no longer hear, shoes he’d never wear again. She wondered if that was the real cruelty of life; you could feel people leaving.

The tape played. Big, beautiful voices echoed. Piano and brass instruments filled the space around them. Glenn held her so close that she could feel his heartbeat.

And then for the first time in her life, time stood still. They swayed, gentle, for what could have been seconds or days, it didn’t matter. Finally, so small in his arms, with the old man’s music playing and time spinning madly on, she knew what life was for.

Sweetieface - Short Story Excerpt

The excerpts, divided by pictures, are from two different parts of the story and don't appear consecutively.




"Sam! I love this song!"

"Me too."

"Let's dance Sam!"

"I don't dance."

"Oh, come on, it's me, and you're drunk, and nobodies here."

Sam looks around the bar. It's empty. When did everyone leave? 

"Please, Sam? I love this song."

When she's standing there she looks so beautiful. Her hair has fallen, and she looks drunk, and happy, and finally relaxed enough to be herself. Sam is overcome with a furious desire to touch her, to hold her, to be against her. He wishes he could tell her how he feels in this moment. Because of the alcohol, he would, if he knew the words to describe it right. But words don't ever fit how he feels for her. He thinks then that maybe some things are meant only to be felt; forever unspoken and misunderstood, lonesome and unfair.

Then he looks at her again. He can't stop himself.

He grabs her, and pulls her close. She falls into him. Her hands find his shoulders, and he holds her waist. They sway together. They dance, closer than friends dance. No one is looking at them. They move with an intimacy usually saved for when they are alone. Grace rests her head on Sam.

He thinks a new Sam is born when he holds her. The brave Sam. The Sam he wants to be. The man who doesn't exist without her, who doesn't breath in him alone. They continue to sway, now cheek to cheek.

She feel so soft against him.



Sam sits slumped on his chair waiting for Grace. He can't feel his legs beneath him.

He’s going to tell her.

Be brave, Sam.

Forget Lilly, forget everything, forget everyone.

Be brave, Sam.

Tell her. Go on, love her.

Love her forever.

Grace comes back to the table. She sits down. She looks like she’s been crying.

For a few seconds, no one speaks.

Be brave, Sam.

"Grace, I - "

"Sam, I have to go."

"What?"

"Yeah, I'm just really fucked, and Luke just texted me back and apologized and I just have to go see him. I'm going to just take a cab home, I'm just really fucked. I need to go to bed, I'm really fucked. I don't feel well."

"Oh, okay. Sure."

She gets up, and so does he, but the sound is sucked out of the room.

All he can hear is his own voice in his head, saying, “Be brave, Sam.”

"Sam, tonight was really fun," says Grace, but she sounds like she’s under water.

"Yeah, it was really fun," he can feel himself say, but he’s surprised when it comes out of his mouth.

It echoes.

"It was really good to see you, I really missed you," she says.

And Grace leaves Sam just how she found him; alone at a table with half a drink left.

She walks out the door.

Be brave, Sam, he says to himself once more.

He doesn't stop her.

All he can hear is his heart beating; that human noise he sat there making, not daring to move, not even when the room went dark.

Forever - Personal Essay Excerpt

That summer my Mom looked at me in the middle of the day and said, “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I just couldn’t go back to things the way they were. I wish I could.”

The sadness in her was incredible. I knew it had been hard for her, that leaving my father took a giant amount of strength, but she’s done a lot and a lot that’s difficult. I should have realized this was the hardest, the worst of all. But I hadn’t.

Later that week, my father and I were sitting on the porch talking. He wanted to throw me a party to celebrate my wedding and give me a grand to put towards it.

“No, Dad, you don’t need to do that. I think Glenn and I will maybe, one day have a real wedding. I mean, I never saw myself getting married without my family there.”

“Yeah, neither did we,” he said.

I stayed quiet. I guess I had pictured my wedding, I just hadn’t realized until then.

“You were always so romantic,” he said. “I sang you a song about Hank Williams who had to leave an Indian woman, and you cried until I made up a new ending and told you he came back to get her. You would watch those Disney movies over and over again and you always cried when they married Prince Charming.”

I hadn’t remembered. Thinking about the little me, her romantic hopes, made me realize that I did believe in fairytales once. Sure, the marriage ceremony itself didn’t matter, maybe not even then, but I did believe, with some child-part of me, in love eternal. My Dad had always remembered. The way he dealt with it was wrong, but now it seemed he was only trying to do the right thing, trying to force me to live up to what he thought I wanted, thought I deserved.

My mom was only trying to do the same.

Once, they had loved each other, and they both had wanted so desperately for it to be eternal. Things just didn’t turn out that way. They, like everyone else, had spent their decades together trying to do the right thing. They tried to be good, they tried to be right, they tried, as best they knew how, to make it work. They tried.

And that’s the saddest thing of all.





I tell people that they’re happier now. But they’re not. This is just where the chips fell. Looking back and looking forward, there were one million reasons this all happened but one feels truest; these things just do.

That sort of sums up my feelings about life. Things, good and bad, happen randomly, for no real reason other than that they just do. And so things change. People get married and marriages break up because that’s the course your life feels like taking.

The room felt warm that Glenn and I were married in. My face hurt from smiling. My eyes were starry because Gina’s camera kept flashing. When he was saying his vows I thought of my parents. I wondered if they were spending this moment separated, but together, with thoughts of me, thoughts of them, thoughts of forever. If they’d spend the rest of their lives separated but together, if every moment would be split in two, coloured with remorse for what could have been, for what eventually was.

Then that feeling and the heaviness floats away. As I move towards the sweet, redeeming light, I think, I love him.

I love him.

Months later, when I go to visit him in Belfast, I forget my wedding rings.