Those Unheard

Mrs. Brixton never knew whether she was supposed to drive Hannah home or back to her own house. The girls just assumed she knew, and she was too proud to ask. So she usually just guessed, or used subtle clues, or - when her headache was particularly bad - just made an executive decision and brought Hannah where she belonged. Of course, there was Hannah’s mother to consider as well, volatile and proud. Sometimes she would get mad when Hannah turned up after being at the Brixtons for a few days, and it was hard to tell whether she was angry that Hannah had been gone or that she had returned. Once, Mrs. Brixton had attempted to drop Hannah off and had breathed her usual sigh of relief, only to be told by Victoria five minutes later that she had to turn around and pick Hannah up again because Hannah’s mother was drunk and threatening to hit her and “how would you feel if Hannah died mom.” Mrs. Brixton had met Hannah’s mother a handful of times and she had seemed friendly in a lowe...

“Not to sound like some spoiled prep school kid who just got pulled over for drunk driving, but do you know who my father is?” the man asked the woman across from him. “I mean literally. Do you?” “No. Should I?” “Not necessarily. You’re not a psychologist. But he’s actually pretty well-known in psychological circles, he made a splash with this one paper he published when he was, like, twenty-eight, and he’s been riding those coattails ever since.” “I see.’ “No, you don’t. Not yet. The thesis of his paper was, basically, that sons always rebel against their fathers by doing the opposite of what their fathers would do. Anything they associate with their fathers becomes poison.” “Sounds like recycled Freud.” “Oh, exactly. It was, but nobody cared. It’s like how no one cares that every superhero movie is the exact same boring good-versus-evil trope. People just can’t get enough of it. But they’re too proud to admit they want to just watch the same movie over and ov...

With his mom and Becca gone for the day, and his dad occupied with some project in the garage - something practical, something homeownery - James was basically alone, basically free. He saw the day spread out before him like a desert that extended infinitely in all directions. Or like the ocean to a shipwrecked sailor. Either image worked. They felt the same, despite being opposites. Too much water is the same as not enough, he reflected. Like Adam expelled from Eden, he could do whatever he wanted. But he had lost his Eve. And the whole problem with the Snake was that she did whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted to do it, and he didn’t want to be like Her. He sat on the couch, deliberately ignoring the computer and the TV because they were poisonous, and fragments of old conversations drifted back to him. XXxSuicidesxGracexXX: i hate when people say be yourself XXxSuicidesxGracexXX: like who the f else am i being xx themachine: i think it means like be true to you...

Susan’s weekend job was to be Becca’s chauffer. And, like any good driver, she knew that she did her job best when she did it least. Jefferson would have been proud. So she abstained from all but the most essential parts of driving, the parts that Becca herself couldn’t do because of her size, brain development, or regard for the law. Pushing the pedal, turning the wheel. But all the other facets that make up the phenomenon that fully-realized human beings know as “driving” she had to leave for her daughter: control of the radio, the windows, the destination and route, the conversation. It was easier that way. Today, it was a pool party. Not a birthday party, she had been sure to check: just a party for its own sake. A tedious afternoon of sitting and standing around in someone else’s backyard when she would have much preferred to be sitting and standing in her own. Soon, Becca would reach the drop off age, but now that was still a faux pas. It could be done, but only with the...

The eldest Brixton girl, Catherine, had majored in Psychology; Elizabeth, two years younger, to prove that she was not her sister, decided instead to major in Sociology instead. But she started to regret this decision when she was informed, at a party a few weeks into her freshman year, that Sociology was basically just Psychology-lite, psychology for people who weren’t smart enough to actually understand psychology. Since then,  her main conversational aim had become explaining the differences between the two, with the slight implication that sociology was actually more difficult and more important. She didn’t realize it, but this was basically her modus operandi . In high school, she had gone through a lengthy affair with “empathy” and “sympathy.” No, she wasn’t just being sympathetic when she listened to you talk about your problems; she was actually being empathetic because she was feeling what you were feeling. “Oh, okay, thank you, that really helps,” was the usua...

The Letter by Aleksandr Pyotrovitch K________ I do not know how many days I have been here. There are no calendars, no clocks, no pocket-watches. There is only time, stagnant and heavy, like a mud-filled river. We work and we rest: when we work, we long to rest, and when we are at rest, we desire work. At all times, we desire food and warmth and good company. But these things begin to seem to us like mere dreams. We have forgotten them. We remember only that they are good, that they are something to want. The letter came one day. I don’t know when it was, except that it was the day the letter came. It drifted down with the snow. A small, brown envelope with a red seal on its backside. I was walking alone when I found it. It could have been anyone else who found it. But it was me. I picked it up and tucked it inside my coat, like a cherished gift. I opened it alone, too. We are so rarely alone. And yet we are always alone. I was very careful when I opened the letter. I ...

Robert Melrose (he wasn’t Bobby until he entered the entertainment industry) liked Sundays better than any other day of the week. Church was fine - school’s more dramatic cousin - but Youth Group, that was where he really shined. That was where he got to be what felt like his truest self: a little asshole. He loved asking questions that would get the priests and nuns and Community Members all riled up, knowing they would never kick him out because it would mean giving up on a pure sweet innocent lamb. In fact, he spent most of the duller parts of school and church thinking up particularly good questions to ask on Sunday afternoon. A recent one he had been particularly proud of: “If the people in Heaven are so good, then how come it doesn’t bother them that all their friends got sent to Hell?” At first, this had started as an exercise to see how far these people were willing to play along. Then, somewhere around the age of ten, it occurred to him that they actually believed it. Or ...