Story 1: A Kiss For The Heart To Grow
And on that night, her heart grew 5 times bigger. She never knew that such magic existed in the world. To her, dreams only came true in fairy tales. Let us all thank the heavens that she was wrong. Nothing would ever compare to that warm spring evening. Should her heart have given out that second, she would have died happy.
If only she could have foreseen the magic that lied ahead.
Story 5: The Origin of Love
This is a story about love as a solution. This is a story about coming together as a goal. This is a story about love as a distraction. This is a story about love as a punishment.
Story 4: Realizing Tourettes
One day, I came home from basketball practice and couldn’t stop laughing. Nothing was funny. It was more of an evil witch doctor kind of laugh anyway. I sat on a green couch and I cried to my mother and I thought maybe I was dying. A few months later, I was diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome.
Story 3: Adam and Eve
This is a story about knowledge as a punishment. This is a story about love as a punishment. Love is a punishment.
Confessions about Adam and Eve:
Why is it always Adam and Steve? How do we feel about Madeline and Eve? Or Madam and Eve? Does that sound too much like a romance novel?
I don’t think knowledge is a punishment.
I don’t think death is a punishment.
Story 2: Cremation
My sort-of grandpa loves the poet Robert Service, and every summer at our family reunion he offers an grandchild $50 if they can recite the poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by heart in front of our huge family (Irish Catholics have lots of babies. They also name them after themselves so we’re all Jon and Mary and Paul and Theresa). You get your name on a plaque afterwards. Now we all know this damn poem and we recite it together like some weird cult. There are strange things done in the midnight sun…
Story 1: Suspicious Grapes
Joe doesn’t give a shit. Joe is gonna win. There’s no one else in this house. Joe is still a raisin.
The first child is always the hardest. Here they are, a tiny person, and even though they shit everywhere and cry they’re like these little balls of potential, and you can’t help but wonder what they’ll be like once they stop being so helpless.
The oldest was at that age now; it was time to tell him. The first step away from innocence. He was always so curious, always reading, and it seemed like the more he read, the stranger he became. And he was so interested in Biology. He’d probably read all about it anyway.
…
The explanation could have gone better, but ultimately the point got across. Now it was time for questions; anything but something awkward about Daddy and Mommy. He looked up, puzzled.
“Are bees mammals?”
Story 2: Tip Tap
cold air on a dark night,
two men sit in low light.
tip tap, tip tap, tip tap,
tip tap, tip tap, tip tap,
tip tap, tip tap, tip tap,
BANG.
Story 1: Stop Motion Ganesha
Story 5: Alex
So, I woke up this afternoon and…well…I found something. It’s small, I’m sure just a minor tumor, or maybe a hernia? Can you get those there?
And, it’s fine…it’s probably spreading, I should go. To the doctor’s and…well, my legs have stopped working. And is that tingling in my arms? Does that mean a stroke, or a heart attack…both, it’s probably both.
You know what they’d say. You’re fine. You’re fine. Probably fine. Definitely…not fine. Definitely dying.
A hypochondriac knows both nothing and everything are wrong.