Monthly Archives: January 2016

The Herd Which Pulled Her Back.

Mrinalini Raj

Silence bellowing at its top, pierced her ears. The wood-shaded shelves tried hard to fill the large void of that room. Library, she assumed secluded her from every boundary of the world, but that evening changed her perception. She saw his face on every book, which sitting on its bed called- out for her to live the life it hid, every word his mouth evolved, she saw them embodied in the pages she turned into, she heard his voice humming in the silence of that room. There was a sudden bang of her closing the book. It left her perspiring, she could feel the sweat rolling down on the edge of her face. The light above faded on the wall ahead. She collected the scattered memories of her conversation with her father, an argument they had indulged into. She standing with the definition of art fought with his practically sound…

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Violet

Longreads

Adele Oliveira | Longreads | January 2016 | 23 minutes (5,727 words)

I don’t believe in fate, or that life events, both everyday and profound, unfold the way that they’re supposed to. Yet the first six months of my first pregnancy were at once mundane and ordained. I got pregnant quickly. Morning sickness and a sore back arrived right on schedule. Growing up, my mom acquainted me with the details (like gaining 60 pounds) of her two healthy pregnancies and the unmedicated, uncomplicated births that resulted in me and my sister. I’d wanted to be a mother since I was a toddler pretending to breastfeed my dolls, and so I outlined the birth of a healthy child in an indelible mental framework, so unconscious and routine that it felt like destiny.

My pregnancy ended abruptly when our daughter Violet was born two years ago in late September, at 25 weeks…

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The Most Haunted Road in America

Longreads

Taffy Brodesser-Akner | Atlas Obscura | October 2015 | 20 minutes (4,944 words)

Our latest Exclusive is a new story by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, co-funded by Longreads Members and published by Atlas Obscura.

1.

In a part of New Jersey where snakes slither slowly across a road, still coiled and yet somehow still moving; in a part of New Jersey where an insect that looks like a miniaturized bat sits on your windshield, menacing you while you make a sound that doesn’t sound quite like you from inside your car; in a part of New Jersey with a disproportionate amount of road kill in an already highly populated-by-road kill state; in a part of New Jersey where your phone cannot, will not pick up any kind of signal; here, in West Milford, in the county of Passaic, lies Clinton Road, a 10-mile stretch of haunted highway.

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