The tracking dot on the Dispatch screen stopped blinking at 2:14 PM. Management thought it was an unauthorized break. It was actually a heart stopping in the middle of Oak Creek Drive. His name was Arthur. Everyone called him “Old Artie.” I was the one sent to replace him. I’m twenty-four, fit, and efficient. I […]

I almost threw the box in the trash without opening it. It sat on my porch, wrapped in reused brown paper and taped up with so much duct tape it looked like a science project. No return address label, just a name scrawled in marker that I didn’t recognize. In a world full of scams

My son locked the doors of his pristine electric sedan, convinced he was driving a senile old man to a hospice to fade away. He didn’t realize he was driving the landlord through his own secret empire. I sat in the passenger seat, staring at my hands. They are ugly hands, I suppose. Knuckles swollen

My husband didn’t pack his bags for a mistress. He packed them for a “movement.” He said he was suffocating in our silence, but the truth is, he was drowning in the noise. We were the picture of the American Dream, circa 2024. Or maybe the caricature of it. We had the house in the

At 3:17 AM last Tuesday, the wealthiest man in Ohio took his final breath. He didn’t die in a penthouse suite surrounded by nurses. He died on the cold, waxed linoleum floor of Northwood High, Hallway B, right next to a humming vending machine. For six hours, his body lay there unnoticed. The industrial floor

The pink slip in my six-year-old’s hand wasn’t just a piece of paper. To him, it looked like a prison sentence. To me, as I watched him walk out of the school gates with his head hanging low, it looked like the first crack in his spirit. My name is Mark, and I’m just an

My siblings pulled up to the funeral in shiny rental cars, ready to claim an inheritance they felt entitled to. They had no idea our parents had sold me the house for exactly one dollar ten years ago. “They called me the ‘freeloader’ for a decade while they traveled the world. Today, with Mom’s body

My son called the police because he thought I had been kidnapped. He was tracking my phone location, and when he saw the blue dot blinking in the middle of the University District at 2:00 AM on a Tuesday, he panicked. He screamed into the phone, “Dad! Who has you? Are you okay?” I laughed,

I walked in to deliver a greasy fast-food bag to a nurse laughing at a viral video on her phone, but I walked out shaking with a kind of rage I haven’t felt in years, leaving my own dinner behind to feed a starving hero I couldn’t afford to save. It was 7:15 PM on

My son is pounding on my front door in Chicago right now. What he doesn’t know is that I’m 3,000 miles away, staring up at a sky burning with green and violet light. It’s Christmas Eve. My phone buzzes. It’s a FaceTime from David. I see his face on the screen. He looks stressed. Behind