By Shantel-Ann Pettway
With my 10-year-old hands attached to the side of the grocery cart that my god-mother pushed, I suppressed the urge I had to pick up items that weren’t on the grocery list. I loved going to the grocery store as a child because I always had a chance to get my favorite sweet, bubblegum.
By Jacob Dick
It was an average looking CD case, like any other my dad left behind. I had pulled it from the shelf by chance as I was searching for something to listen to. I never expected to be holding a portrait of an anthropomorphic hairless cat chained to a dartboard outlined with throwing knives, surrounded by chimera with Satan heads. My 8-year-old mind couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at. This wasn’t like the stoic morbidity of the cow skull on the front of the Eagles Album. This was more unsettling than the crooked old man on Led Zeppelin IV.
By Lindsay Whittington
I’m in Sarah’s living room with a group of people I know–all good friends, I might add–but all I can think about is the chili. It is at the center of my consciousness. Fear of it is gripping my mind and making my stomach clench in uncomfortable knots. My friends are blurs around me. I can’t see them. I can barely hear them. All that is there is the chili, sitting innocuously in its orange pot on Sarah’s kitchen table.
By Austin Rutland
I watched my 10-year-old brother as he stared at the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that sat on a cracked beige plate.
