Jay Williams : A Short Story

The first nine years of his son’s life seemed like that may be true. Lawrence Junior started going to Palisades School for Boys when he was six years old and he was flourishing. Lawrence Junior was very bright and had fantastic potential. He learned how to ride a bike at seven years old and his father bought him his very own bike because he was so proud of him. Lawrence Senior and his wife were nothing, but optimistic about their future as a family until the year of 1914. That year everything changed. Lawrence Senior’s wife was in an automobile accident on her way home from the grocery store and was killed on impact. He was grateful his wife felt no pain in her passing, but the same could not be said for him and his son’s feelings. That day

When disaster strikes, two responses exist: lose hope, or find an inner strength to rise above. “Werner” is an essay where the author, Jo Ann Beard, presents the idea of rediscovering yourself, rebuilding a life after loss, and rising above adversity. Werner, Beard’s main character, finds that the only way to truly move on after a tragedy is to take a leap into what is unfamiliar. After a fire burns down everything Werner has, he is forced to grow and become a new man, leaving his old life behind. Throughout the essay, Beard illustrates a man who faces challenges to his sense of self, and who sequentially must change and become someone new to find who he is again. Beard’s use of the third person, candid diction, and conflict resolution compose an elaborate work that focuses on the concept of becoming a new and better person after a traumatic event.

“Stanley Williams – Murderer, Thief, Philanthropist.” This was how a bibliography website described the occupation of Stanley Williams. It was very bizarre to see those three strikingly different words in the same sentence because they don’t normally belong together. Stanley Williams was not at all what anyone would classify as normal though. He grew up with very bizarre living conditions. Stanley Williams was born on December 23rd 1953 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father left the family early on and forced Stanley’s mother, who was seventeen at the time to raise him. In 1959, he hopped on a greyhound train with his mother and moved to sunny Los Angeles. He started wandering the streets at six shortly after moving because he found his

In order to earn her degree in creative writing she needed to complete a novel or set of short stories. She intended to write her memoir but ran into some issues. The emotions about what had happened were still too raw and reliving her memories was too much for her to handle at that time. Instead, she wrote an autobiographical novel. The events that happened in the book all happened to her, but the presence of a fictional character to represent her helped create tolerable distance between her and her experiences. This novel prepared her to write her memoir. Writing her memoir allowed her confront her past in a new way. It required her to revisit her memories as a writer rather than as herself with all her entangled emotions. Examining her life through a different lens allowed her to heal.

Tim wants his reader to know that stories can help us heal from wounds that life has delivered. Paul Berlin started to try to move on from Billy’s death but that was hard to do. When the helicopter came to pick Billy’s body up he couldn’t stop laughing. He didn’t know why he was laughing at a time like that, but he

Levi Owens expected a showdown. Although he wasn’t sure how the swindle worked, he suspected the bank manager and someone in the land office were in cahoots. He’d read about land-grabbing cheats, respectable businessmen who forged papers and let the bank foreclose on innocent debtors.

Here’s the thing about high school, it’s terrible. Not because I don’t just absolutely love learning useless things like the makeup of a plant cell, but rather because teachers and students underestimate me or try to walk all over me because I’m that one kid who gets into fights and lives in detention. Oliver, he likes to call himself my dad ever since the adoption, I still call him Oliver to mess with him though, insists I need to graduate high school knowing I hate it. However he likes to tell me there’s a silver lining in everything and the silver lining for me going to school is Matt. Perfect, smart, cool, and absolute badass Matt Williams. Hockey team captain and resident popular guy.

Jonathan Smith tasted soot: not an unusual experience. He bit off another piece of the bread he was chewing on and swallowed it down, ignoring the burning at the back of his throat. It was not such a difficult task when one had as much practice as Jon. He reached over and grabbed his bottle of water. He emptied its contents into his throat, the last of the day’s supply. He really should be getting home - his shift was almost over. Jon looked around, seeing the inside an old hanger, a dark cavernous space that made him feel the size of an ant. He examined the workers around him, their eyes all focused on their own rations, all of them strangers to him - all Weathermen, although the definition of that term had changed over the years. Weathermen were never allowed to get to

This week of practice was the best I had ever had because I was finally named captain. I was taken off of offense so I can just focus on defense. It was like a dream come true because I generally hate offense because there are too many rules. On defense you cyan just let loose and go wild and I have mastered that aspect of the game. I was always known as being the kid that was afraid to hit. Now, with my new position, that’s all I ever want to do. Football has changed my life all because a Coach took a chance.

By the time I was finished I already had thoughts of quitting. We did lots of drills and exercises to help us get in shape. They were all designed to put us in pain and tire us out, this was called hell week. It was probably the worst week of my life. After all of that was over, it was time to put on pads. We were already wearing our helmets to get us used to the feeling. We did hitting drills and we also tried out for positions that we wanted to play.

Sylvia peered up from the essay she was writing, palm to her cheek, quill pen behind her ear, and staring vacantly out the window, pretending to admire the lake view. Instead, she was considering her options. She was rather unusual for a magician; she was more powerful than most, first off, and she only had one friend, who happened to be a werewolf by the name of James Williams. In fact, James was one of the two people still living whom she knew intimately; the other was her twin brother, Thomas.

I was very nervous because this would be the first time I had ever played a full game on both sides of the ball. I watched the captains go out and I kept thinking to myself, please let us get the ball. We got the ball and the crowd went crazy. We received the ball and ran it to our forty yard line. The game was all one way for us through halftime as the score was eight to zero. I had not had a huge impact yet with a few blocks and a couple tackles. The final whistle of the first half blew and we headed into the locker rooms. The coach said something needed to change because the score should not be what it is at right now. We got all our stuff ready and ran back out to the sidelines. We kicked off to start the third

In the short story “The Harvest” by Amy Hempel, an unnamed narrator is in a horrible car accident, where her leg is permanently disfigured. The story takes place after the accident, when the narrator is attempting to process the life changing event that’s just happened to her. The story is broken up into two parts,in the first part she describes the accident and the aftermath - the accident, the hospital, the recovery. But she opens the second half of the story by admitting that not everything we just read is factual. The struggle she is having throughout the story is to cope with and understand her accident, but her emotional distress inhibits that. The narrator conveys her instability and vulnerability that the accident caused in through the ways she decides to alter the details of her story. Although she goes through the process of reflecting on why she does this, she doesn’t come out the other side feeling less confused about why her accident happened to her, or any less unstable and vulnerable.

A year post injury, I had filled 12 journals. I was only allowed a few hours of activity each day, but on the nights I couldn’t sleep due to migraines, I got up and I wrote. Extraordinary feats happened when I wrote. I’d enter a completely different world. The sea of emotions surrounding me would disappear as more words were written, and eventually revealed dry land. I believe that we never know what can help us overcome life’s obstacles.

As the second week began with a bang at that monday evening practice we had our first scrimmage against the eighth grade team,they had been unbeaten the year before but the fact of the matter is the had guys that were like 6”1 or taller and our tallest guy was 5”9.He was on the B team!So you could imagine what happened even though the coaches weren’t keeping track our bench warmers were and it was bad.The score was 42-7 by the end of practice.Next few practices were like intese conditioning but I