Story Therapy

  Image by AI Fear tastes like stale bread Story: S A Spencer Author of Popular Fictions : The Pink Mutiny , The Black Waters , Dream In Shackles The notification popped up on my screen at exactly 10:07 a.m. “Urgent: 1:1 Meeting – Today 4 PM.” Sent by Mr. Raymond Carter , Head of Operations. Not my supervisor. Not even my supervisor’s supervisor. But the man who practically ran the entire Sydney office. My stomach dropped so fast I felt the chair sink with me. I stared at the invite. No agenda. No description. No hint. Just the word urgent , sitting there like a ticking bomb. My supervisor, Daniel, was on leave since yesterday. He had flown to Fiji for a week-long holiday, leaving me with a cheerful “You’ll be fine, mate!” and a thumbs-up emoji. Fine?          Mmmmm.  Fine? My hands were already sweating. I clicked the invite again, hoping some hidden message would magically appear. Nothing. Just the cold, emotionless calendar block....

  Image by AI How two inseparable friends drifted apart without meaning to. Story: S A Spencer Author of Popular Fictions :  The Pink Mutiny ,  The Black Waters ,  Dream In Shackles Evan stared at the blinking cursor on his phone, the message half‑typed, half‑deleted, a ghost of a sentence that refused to settle into words. The screen glowed in the dark room, illuminating the exhaustion in his eyes. He had rewritten the same message at least twenty times tonight, each version sounding either too desperate, too cold, too apologetic, or too confrontational. Hey man, been a while. Thought I’d check in. Delete. Lucas, I don’t know what happened between us, but— Delete. I miss you, okay? There. I said it. Delete. His thumb hovered over the keyboard, trembling slightly. He could almost hear Lucas’s voice in his head — warm, teasing, familiar — but the imagined responses twisted into something else. Something sharp. Something that made his chest tighten. He ...