It's always late at night that it hits you. Just as you're about to go to sleep, you're about to actually give in to the quilt, to the mattress, and the darkness, your mind is going to release, and then -

Sometimes it's a welcome thought. Sometimes it's useful, helps you get things finished in time, or it's a great idea you need to put down. Sometimes.

Rarely.

Sometimes it's mostly neutral, and it's just getting rid of it that counts.

Sometimes.

Most of the time, though? It's one of those haunting thoughts. One of the ones you don't know...

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They crouched to peer beneath the stairs. Michelle lay there in a drunken, unconsious heap.

"Ok, how are we going to get her up to bed?" sighed Peter.

"You're going to carry her." said Natasha, flatly.

"No, not again. I didn't move into his houseshare just to spend my Saturday mornings carrying my alchy housemates around". said Peter.

Natasha turned towards Peter and said in a hushed tone, "She's not alcoholic, she's just not over Steven yet".

"He dumped her 2 months ago!"

Suddenly, there was some movement beneath Michelle's still body.

Peter and Natasha peered beneath the stairs again...

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So close, yet so far. Matey the Pirate never understood the phrase until these last few days of his life. The woodpecker would get closer and closer to the nub that was left of his leg, chipping away at the wooden peg that was left. He had to make it to shore. The ship was not going to last. The gapping hole in the bottom was filling the ship with too much water. This all meant that Matey would have to float to shore. Alone, he had not enough buoyancy to make it. In such a situation he though could...

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"Wait, so he hit you?"

We had been over the story several times by now, as Carl sat down bringing a fresh round of amber colored liquid in pint glasses.

I ignored his question as I tried to figure out if this was another IPA or something different.

"Yes," I said, snapping back to reality.

"Damn dude, that fucking sucks," Carl said taking a sip of his beer.

I shook my head in agreement. Took a sip. It was the IPA. Damn that is a good beer.

"Yeah, he just snapped after I told him he was being an asshole...

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We come from beyond the stars. We are the Yorkie chocolate bars.

I was in Grade 4 and this giant living chocolate bar was walking around the schoolyard. We tried shooting it and pelting it with rocks. But nothing worked. The chocolate bar was too thick.

"YORKIE!" it screamed and then it tickled me. Or gave me a wedgie.

Man, I hated that thing. But I have to confess that in a weird way, I liked it too. Don't ask me why but for some reason, I sensed that it wasn't completely malevolent. No. Deep down, I knew there was...

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"Light. I feel light"

"I should think so, you lost about half of you."

I struggled to open my eyes, afraid to see what had happened. The last thing I remembered before the darkness was the light, the bright light that had surrounded and suffused me, that had seemed to consume me. A hand waved in front of my face, and at first I was certain it wasn't mine, couldn't be mine. I had never been that skeletal, I had always been a rather large man.

"Easy there, you just did something stupid or amazing, and you're rather week. We...

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One person shouldn't be able to change your life forever. I think we all know people who have been affected outside of their control - torture, rape, molestation... it's a little fucked up to put love in the same category, isn't it?

Maybe the crucial difference is that it's a sweet anguish. That's why I feel sick to my stomach, I can't sleep at night, my conscious is fixated on one person and one event. It makes me smile when I don't feel like crying. This seems like such a high school thing. Aren't those the cuts that make the...

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She blew out the candles on her birthday cake, and the world we knew was extinguished. The next day, streamers and half-deflated balloons still taped to the walls and ceiling, Dad came home and pulled Mom into the kitchen and they spoke in whispers.
Jenny looked at me and snuck up to the television and turned down the volume, so we could hear was they were saying, but Mom knew and stuck her head in and told us to go down to Grandma's for the afternoon.
We walked down the block, turned right at the corner store, left after two...

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She heard it calling out to her. Her clearing in Yellowstone -- it was whispering that it longed for her presence. And on this day, when she felt like the world was collapsing around her -- its edges bent and frayed and its fringes burning up in smoke -- she dragged herself there up winding paths and wild trees.

While most people saw Yellowstone as a national park, she saw it as her backyard, her sanctuary, her refuge. She had a clearing there, all her own, that bears in the hundreds of years they'd been there hadn't even found. But...

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Her joints screamed as the winter chill ran through her veins and iced her skin. It was so cold out and this blizzard was never-ending.

Julia huddled around the oven pumping heat into the 500 square-foot apartment, something her mother said to never do but it's not like the heat worked.

"Why the hell did I go out there?" Julia said aloud to the appliances.

She threw Ryan out for a reason but months of anticipation made the actual act much harder. She wasn't even sure if it was going to be today, but in the end it was. He...

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