The Night We Weren't Ourselves
I drove up to Redwood National Park on a Friday afternoon in late August, twenty-four years old and tired in a way that sleep wasn't going…
Top 100 stories
The most-read stories this week, ranked by how many readers open, read and finish them. Some are free to read in full; the rest open with a free preview.
Stories
81 82 Second Chance on Felt
Camila racked the balls one more time even though the table was done for the night.
83 The Boot Room
We booked the Alpenrose Lodge back in October, and I had the whole weekend planned out with meticulous precision.
84 The Vent's Lament
The hum of the tubes never stops.
85 The Barge Photographs
Hospital waiting rooms are a strange kind of place when you think about them.
86 Dispatch Silence
Rory Pendleton pushed open the door of the Gongju dispatch center at dusk, snow dusting the shoulders of his jacket.
87 Calibration
I came to Zánka for a vinegar tasting, which is not the sort of sentence I ever expected to say out loud.
88 Last Night at the Gym
My name is Perry Brooks, I am fifty-one years old, and last Friday night I did something at the gym that I had never done in five years of…
89 The Tide Table Test
Thelma had been compiling tide tables at the coastal post office for six years, thirty-two years old and unmarried and mostly content, and…
90 The Crawlspace Pact
Nicky Middleton had her arm in the stock tank up to the shoulder, breaking ice out of it with a hammer, when her phone buzzed against her…
91 The Midnight Pharmacy Run
The sign above the porch still said KÖT instead of KÖTT, missing one T, because nobody had ever fixed the missing T, and Jada had been…
92 The Debt Was a Story
*This story came from a thought about debts and unexpected forms of payment.
93 River Song, Late Takes
The barge sat low in the water at the mooring outside Villeneuve-sur-Seine, and Marshall Sanford stood on the plank ramp with a clipboard…
94 Bow Saw Matinee
The rain had been coming down for two days straight and the gravel behind the bar had turned into this gray soup that pooled around the…
95 Caged Devotion
I got to Port Stephen on a Friday afternoon in June.
96 Rooftop Slow Burn
Sue here, forty-two, landscaper, hands like sandpaper no matter how much lotion I buy.
97 Chastity Bet
Nadine here.
98 Dares After Dark
I'm fifty-two years old, and until a year ago the most reckless thing I did on a Friday night was leave the dishes until Saturday.
99 Stranded at Midnight
Silas Rogers was forty-four years old and he was crouched behind a vending machine in a half-empty airport terminal in the middle of…
100 The Dock Timber Conch
Alana woke up with a dead arm and pine needles everywhere.
That’s the top 100. Narrow it down with a tag or search.