Chapter 30 The chair was so hard. I shifted and pulled my feet up under me, wrapping my arms around myself for warmth. Cold in here too. As soon as I'd gotten to the station in the back of the patrol car, they took me to this interrogation room and walked out. I'd been sitting here, alternately pacing and trying to get comfortable in the hard metal chair, f...
CHAPTER 1: CAGE I live in a town that hates magic. In truth, I may live in a world that hates magic. You could be thinking "It's not the magic you hate, but rather the fear of what it can do." Well, you would be partially correct in making that distinction. We hate the casters of magic. We hate that they use their magic to terrify and enslave us, but it is...
My name is Nathaniel Baxter. Nathan, I go by. I'm 18 years old and in my first semester at the local community college. I have a twin sister, Nicole. Nicole is 15 minutes older than me, and she definitely plays up the big sister role. I was going to a party with Nicole and her boyfriend, Eric. I had just got out of the shower and I finished getting dressed....
"Is he dead? He looks dead." "No, I just checked, he's still alive." Avery felt something hard nudge his side, right in his ribs. He grimaced, and tried to force his eyes open but couldn't. His entire body was wracked with pain. He couldn't move. His head was aching with such piercing pain; it felt as though it had been split open. 'Maybe I'm dying.' He...
Prologue Regardless of the clues to the contrary, I always thought of myself as straight. I always had a girlfriend. I was a devoutly Catholic boy in a devoutly Catholic family in a devoutly Catholic Missouri town. This is the story of how I figured out I was gay. I was 22. It was a long journey, so be patient. Part One Mid-way through my first year of la...
I blame Jason Reitman. After five years, I had just about managed to get my friends to consider the possibility that frequent business travel does not necessarily equate to a series of one-night stands offering a smorgasbord of sexual delights. Any way I looked at it, it was a little humiliating to have to keep on affirming that I'm essentially a boring per...
My best friend Adam's parents had gone to Atlanta for the weekend and we were watching a porno flick in their living room. We'd known each other since we were five and at twenty we were best friends, always in and out of each other's houses. Adam's brother David had married a few years earlier and now Adam was the only one left at home. His father owned a on...
Prologue After high school, I enrolled in Colorado College. I had never experienced freedom before, and I did not handle freedom well. I became an addict, first to sex and then to cocaine. It got so bad, I had to drop out after my third semester and spend forty-five days at The Meadows. When I left The Meadows, I returned home to a summer and fall of manual...
Saturday morning I went about the chore of moving. Like my campus apartment, the basement of the house where I'd be living was fully furnished. It was more one large room than an apartment. The bathroom was in a separate room, but that was all. One corner had a sofa, chair, a table and television. Another corner was a complete kitchen set-up; small, but i...
The blue screen of death was never quite so welcome as when Zach stared at his computer that Friday afternoon. It meant that his laptop proved itself, yet again, to be the biggest and most cursed piece of crap in the entire hospital. Since his arrival nearly two years before, his computer, and by extension, his computer skills had been a laughable subject in...