AudgePodge

  A note to the reader: This was a part of my college project on creative writing fiction. This story contains themes of suicide, alcoholism, mental health, and dark elements. David Kenneth Abbasi, 34-years-old and 5-feet-eleven-inches, sits on the balcony overlooking the city. The wind is crisp with a puzzling undertone of ammonia. Neon flashes and flickers, casting a reddish-orange glow over the night sky. It’s cold, perhaps stale, but not uncomfortable. David has money, but you would never know it. He sits with his worn leather boots crossed and his saddlebag slung absentmindedly across the left shoulder. Both are scuffed with years of wear. He dons a flannel, most likely found in a free bin years ago, though he doesn’t remember this; he does not pay attention to the small details in life. David is a big picture guy. He can barely recall his seventh birthday — the one where his birthday clown inadvertently flirted with his aunt the entire afternoon — because it wasn’t a big pict...

  Rites of passage: structured ceremonies or rituals that lead into a person’s adulthood.  We have all experienced something of the sort. Perhaps you felt the most “mature” when you plopped behind the wheel for the first time. Maybe when you first stepped onto a college campus, or into a new job. Or perhaps it was when you graduated high school, and legally became an adult.  Well, for me, nothing really clicked .  Yes, after finally getting my driver’s license after renewing my permit three times, I felt more adult. Yes, after graduating homeschool high school with a GED, I felt more adult. And, yes, with my knees buckled and my hands shaking, I felt most like an adult marching onto a college campus for the first time on Sept. 30, 2025.  But these accomplishments, these average rites of passage, could not compare to the day I learned to successfully tie my shoes, the right way.  The mantras I was told over and over: bunny loop. Around the bend, and then und...