Horror and Wholesome
People like happy. They respond to happy. Sad is a different story. One that’s far shorter, with fewer characters and less descriptors. Sad is the thin leaflet you hide between the brighter covers. No one really wants to know it’s there. Not even you. Sad is uncomfortable. And so, I was “happy”. I had my... Continue Reading →
You can only see her when you can’t see her. There are a lot of theories surrounding her: she was a great beauty who died of a wasting disease that left her hideous in death, she was attacked by a spurned suitor and committed suicide after he disfigured her face, she was murdered and mutilated... Continue Reading →
I know what happens to you when you die: You become a file. If you led a good life, that is to say, one filled with first class travel, designer labels, and a “small” villa in the French countryside, you’re a fat file. If you were the Average Joe, you end up an average file.... Continue Reading →
It snows at sea. Sometimes I forget that. Or, I try to, anyway. Frozen white on an endless field of black. It feels alien out there when it’s snowing. Maybe I’d feel differently if it hadn’t been snowing that night. But it was, and I don’t, and I’ll never know otherwise. Dad was a crabber.... Continue Reading →
Twelve hour shifts were hard, especially at the holidays, when all I wanted was to be home with my own family. I'd been lucky enough to have Christmas off, which was by far the more important day in my opinion, so I really shouldn't have been too bothered, but it did mean spending New Year's... Continue Reading →
It was the week before Christmas; the homestretch. I should have been feeling all holly and jolly, filled with the spirit of the season, but it was hard when I was stuck trekking through a crowded department store filled with other last-minute shoppers, trying to keep up with my two boys as they bounced from... Continue Reading →
Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Unless you’re hundreds of miles away from home with no nearby friends and family. Then it’s just kind of depressing. I hadn’t even been thinking about the holidays when I’d accepted my new job in early December. I was too caught up in the stress and... Continue Reading →
In movies, right before a traumatic accident happens, the screen cuts to black. When it reopens again, it’s in The After. There’s no hospital with all the tubes and machinery, no physical therapy, no one holding up the attractively scuffed main character while he tries to remember how to pee straight. They’re just home. Sometimes... Continue Reading →
The first hour after the school day ended was my favorite. Both of my parents worked so I’d have the whole house to myself to watch cartoons, sneak snacks, and put off homework. I raced home on my bike along the same route every day. Schoolyard, up Greeden, over to Maplewood, down Magnolia, and then... Continue Reading →
Dudley’s not such a great name, huh? I’ve never thought so and I’m one of the sad sacks saddled with it. Dudley Stephen Smith. Technically the second, I think, but I’m not well versed enough in generational naming semantics to be sure. What I do know, however, was that the guy I’m named for, my... Continue Reading →
Stories By S.H. Cooper 