In the last five days, multiple news anchors have called for the death of homeless people and they all still have their jobs. Other people have stated, with no spin or hyperbole, the beliefs of a man who was killed in the middle of making excuses for mass shootings being an acceptable loss for the right to have guns and gotten themselves fired, doxed, or stuck on administrative leave as a result. People have come out of the woodwork to praise a man who spoke only hate merely because he was killed. An entire factory of temporary workers were abducted by ICE and had their human rights violated while imprisoned, which isn’t even the worst thing that happened that week. The president of the United States of America has called on the various executive powers of the government to start investigating anyone who has spoken ill of him publicly (culminating in Jimmy Kimmel getting taken off the air for incredibly innocuous comments, but that seems to have broken through to the general public in a way nothing else has so far, which feels both horrendous and mildly relieving–horrendous because so much worse has happened already and mildly relieving because finally, something broke through to the public). A man going about his day-to-day life was killed by ICE agents who lied about what happened and will likely face no real consequences because there’s no way to know for sure who did what because they’re going around with their faces hidden and all identifying information removed from what can’t even be called their uniforms. All of this, and so much more I can’t bear to write about (or don’t dare to write about) has happened in the first half of the month (September, 2025).
Continue readingMurder
The Itch
Lennard lifted one carefully trimmed fingernail to his neck and dragged it across the skin. The scrape shuddered through his body, briefly offering reprieve from the drone of his coworker who had launched down another useless tangent. The relief was momentary, though, and the burning demand to act returned worse than ever. If he kept scratching, maybe he’d be able to put that moment off long enough for Zach to get tired of talking.
Continue readingHurry Up!
“Hurry up!”
I grumbled my way into my bedroom and the clock on my desk reminded me I had half an hour, despite my mother’s nagging. When I went back to hang up my towel, I still had ten minutes.
After I finished tying my shoes, I got in the car and waited for my mom and sister to appear. Dad sat behind the steering wheel, drumming his fingers. He seemed as frustrated with
Mom as I was. She’d been shouting at us to hurry up for the last two hours and, even in the car, I could hear her shouting up the stairs at Nadine.
It was exhausting. She had only suggested we visit her parents for dinner yesterday, so her impatience felt ridiculous. When she eventually appeared at the door with Nadine in tow, we
still had a minute left before our departure time.
After everyone had settled, Dad backed the car out of the garage and drove off. I played sudoku on my phone as we drove and ignored Mom’s constant muttering. Half an hour of
muttering later, we arrived to see Grandma’s smiling face waiting for us on their porch.
The visit felt more pleasant than usual because Mom stopped nagging us, but it passed quickly. As Dad parked the car at home, I noticed a cop parked right in front of our house. As Mom ushered us inside, I heard the cop talking to Dad.
“Hello, I’d like to speak to Andrea Fitzner, please.”
“Can I ask what this is about, officer?”
“One of her senior partners was found dead today and we’d like to ask her some questions related to our investigation.”
“Honey?”
Mom shooed us through door and closed it behind us, cutting us off from her and the rest of the conversation.