Quibbling Scribbling

 A man sits alone in a room and scratches his arm. The details of the room are not important to this story, and you may imagine them as you please. Sufficient to say that it was a familiar room to the man, and his presence was nothing but ordinary. The marks on his arm are red and raw. His fine black hairs are stark against the livid flesh. He does not bleed, but the growing trail of petechiae tell that it won’t be long. He does not itch. No itch would compel a man to claw as he does now. Now the inquiring reader asks, “Why?” Perhaps idle curiosity prompts the question. Perhaps nagging impatience. After all, what more can a faceless man in a nondescript room be than a trite morality tale? (For that matter, with all these digressions, what can a story even be other than a self-indulgent commentary? But let’s not lose ourselves here.) So he sits and stares and scratches and what runs through his head as he rakes his nails is not a coherent thought but an awareness of the pain that i...

  The Thing About Regrets Liam shifted the door, centimeter by centimeter, until it was just wide enough to slip a leg through. His pulse pounded in the silence. Behind him, from the darkness, Kyla let out a thunderous snore, and he exhaled. God bless the deep sleepers of the world. The pilfered pouch of coins nestled snugly in the secret pocket beneath his arm, a comforting weight, a burning anticipation. He'd regret this, he knew, when the money ran out, and the alcohol wore off, and he awoke face down in the gutter. Or later, long after he left this shitty excuse for a village for someplace grander and richer, when he'd imagine Kyla's face, all scrunched up in hurt and disbelief. But regret came later and the coin came now. A good woman, Kyla, but it was time to move on, and he already had a pile of regrets and a hell of a thirst, so this seemed like a fair bargain. He laid one foot onto the cold mud outside, and began to shift his weight, wriggling his hips through the ...

 To a Flame "And are your nightmares affecting your sleep?" the psychiatrist asks and I nod, yes, and say that if he had the same dreams, he'd avoid sleeping, too.  Dr. A raises his eyebrows as though I've said something profound and tells me to try breathing exercises again.  He's a gaunt man, almost to the point of emaciation, and his narrow shoulders are sharp beneath the button down that drapes his body.  As he opens his mouth to speak, his skin draws against his angular face. "You're a science guy, so I know you'll appreciate this.  It's a recent study.  Five minutes of relaxed breathing before bed led to a twenty-five percent increase in REM sleep," he says with a small, sly smile, like he's letting me into his confidence. In reply, I ask again if there's some medication that I can take for the dreams or anxiety. "No, Alex, it's important to treat the disease, not mask the symptoms.  Claustrophobia is something called a...