FUCKING DOCTOR THOMPSON • by Jack Williams
My wife got me this tie for my birthday once and it was so obviously awful I think she had it custom made. I smiled with all my teeth and thanked her and then I regifted it to the guy… Continue Reading
psychotherapy
THE SESSION • by Maggie Nerz Iribarne
I knew about her in advance of course; the Hutchings Center had called before they released her to me for subsequent therapy. “Hyper-religiosity. No longer violent, but needs to talk more, and to a woman, I think,” the psychiatric nurse… Continue Reading
TIME UNNOTICED • by Shera L. Hill
Elias never forgot the day. His mother sewed by the fire. His father oiled a saddle. He told the therapist, “I was twelve. I’d been ill. Measles. The fever shifted something. I remember all at once feeling my mother’s presence… Continue Reading
UPWARDS OF ONE • by Tessa Beebe
Anna drummed her fingers along the flour-covered counter and glanced at the old clock that hung on her wall. “Set a timer for 6:10,” she said. Timer set. How are you feeling today, Anna? “Just peachy,” she mumbled. That’s great!… Continue Reading
AN ACT IN THREE BREATHS • by Andrew Punzo
A deep breath. “I know why you keep me around. It’s so you have someone to hate. Because if you didn’t have me, you’d start hating yourself. You already do. You loathe who you are. You’ve been so busy building… Continue Reading
LIZARD BRAIN • by Brandon Arvesen
I watch these parents and their wild children while I clean up the trash and empty the bins. Not a job I enjoy, but Dr. Sanders says work and routines are important. Clyde Peeling’s Reptile Land is a place for… Continue Reading
ADVENTURES IN AGORAPHOBIA • by Dev Jannerson
I repainted each detail for Milo, that first evening. I described the rock growing in my throat, the sudden sense that the supermarket was dangerously big. I described rushing back to the Honda with a jellied barrier between the biting… Continue Reading
BLACKBERRY PIE • by Adi Bracken
Mom always told me my blackberry pie tasted like hers. We’d both be bent at the waist, shoulders hunched, sturdily pushing rolling pins through flour-coated dough in the tiny kitchen. Heat would pool at the back of my neck and… Continue Reading
ON THE COUCH • by David Van Vranken
All I can remember is pitch blackness accompanied by an odd warmth. It felt close, unbearably so. The same warmth always comes. It comes but never goes. It lingers and becomes sickly sweet. Next comes the light — a bright,… Continue Reading
THE NEW STANDARD • by Joshua Joseph Barella
Getwright and I were in the DFAC one day — this was before deployment, pre-mob maybe. He looked over and said to me, And every year when the goslings hatch dad lets the hounds after them. Separate mother goose from… Continue Reading