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By S. Harry Zade
Browsing All posts tagged under »mental health«
At the Epiphany Cafe: Without Memory or Desire
I’ve always wanted to be a ghost. So much so, that I don’t want to wait until I’m dead. I want to pass through doors and look down upon sleepers as they doze. I’ll kibitz with a married couple over coffee and toast, glide footless down darkened hallways and hover sullen above soundless stairs. I’ll […]
At the Epiphany Cafe: Cowboy Tom and the Ghosts of Onion Hill, Part II
March 30, 2013
Cowboy Tom was beginning to attract a crowd. The earnest web surfers of the Epiphany Cafe slammed shut their laptops and inclined their ears to his old fashioned story. He spit into his cup. I waved the Lisping Barista over with a new latte for him, just to keep his tongue loose, and one of […]
Intersections: Chapter 41: The Glove Department
March 6, 2013
Larry had to clean out the contents of his crunched-up car and transfer the items to the new one before he could be on his way. He never thought the glove compartment could contain so much: a driver’s manual that he never consulted, unreadable receipts, a water bottle half filled with ancient water, a book […]
Intersections: Chapter 40: The Deal
February 26, 2013
Larry had his Toyota towed from the corner of the fabulous and the mundane. Although the car was wrecked, he was reinvigorated, as he always was, by even a distant encounter with death. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he was glad to be alive. No matter how heavy and sodden […]
The Lisping Barista: The Battle of the Bedsprings
February 15, 2013
Once, when I was a small child, I crawled under my parent’s bed with my plastic army men and command them to fight the battle of the bedsprings. I posted snipers in the coils while tanks and an anachronistic cavalry faced off down below. The battle had not yet started, so I hadn’t begun to […]
Intersections: Chapter 32: Flooding
January 7, 2013
Larry got in the car to resume his circuitous expedition to redemption. The crunching gravel of the shoulder broke the early morning Arkansas silence. By the time he got up to speed, his traveling companion began snoring beside him, dreaming of New Awe Lands. Larry considered waking him up to tell him off. He was […]
Intersections: Chapter 22: Speed
October 25, 2012
With the aid of the red highways and the blue highways and the yellow highways with the little stripes down the middle, it didn’t take long for Larry to get out of Cleveland and into the countryside of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The meandering roads of the east soon gave way to the chalk line […]
Intersections: Chapter 18: Lost in the Sun
September 26, 2012
“You don’t understand,” Larry said to the bored cashier, “This beer isn’t for me. It’s for my son; he’s a serviceman returning from hot, dusty, dry Afghanistan, where they have no beer.” Against all reason, Larry was already starting to get loud. The more he talked, the louder he got. The more wrong he got, […]
Taming the Pumpkin: The Contemplative Life
September 23, 2012
In the weeks since I returned the cat, things have been relatively quiet for me. There have been no suicide attempts, no patients dropping from the ceiling, no quitting of jobs, no traipsing across the country, no ancient African Gods bumming a ride. I’ve stopped trying to be a meddlesome father to my daughter; we […]
Intersections: Chapter 14: Running
September 8, 2012
There are basically two things you can do with problems: you can face them, or you can run. Most of the time, Larry chose to run. It seemed easier that way, even though he knew running caused its own troubles. He didn’t run in a figurative sense, as people do when they get drunk, high, […]
Intersections: Chapter 12: Dreads
September 1, 2012
“Your next patient is ready,” said the triage nurse. Larry didn’t get up. He was examining the ceiling. His father, wrong about so many other things, was correct about one thing he said. Signs generally could be found at intersections, showing the way. Unfortunately, this particular intersection of two supporting cross members over his head […]
The Stolen Janitor: Admissions
August 11, 2012
I heard a rumor that my author, and lord and master, Keith Wilson, was out of town for a while, going someplace off the grid. So, I thought, why do I have to go on creating stories for him while he’s on vacation? No, I think I’ll raid his book, Fate’s Janitors: Mopping Up Madness […]
Taming the Pumpkin: The Ownership of Thoughts
August 4, 2012
It seems as though my mind is a thought factory, working constantly, at peak capacity, three shifts a day, seven days a week. It manufactures thoughts to order, as when I sit with a patient and she asks me what I think; but, mostly, it churns them out on speculation. It crams the warehouses full […]
Pike’s Peak or Bust: Mountaintop Experience
June 9, 2012
I don’t remember much of the rest of the trip up Pike’s Peak. Natalie, Kim, and Sam went on to songs I didn’t know, the kind they must’ve sang in church youth group. No longer able to sing, I hyperventilated and, as difficult as it is to do in that thin air, may have passed […]
April 6, 2013
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