Tony S.
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Everything posted by Tony S.
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The darkness didn’t arrive all at once. It seeped. It moved the way water does when it finds a crack—quiet, patient, impossible to notice until the floorboards have already started to soften. The days after that night blurred together into something dull and colorless. Not tragic enough to alarm anyone. Not dramatic enough to demand intervention. Just… thinning. Each morning felt a little more drained than the one before it, like whatever part of me generated momentum was leaking
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Saturday morning arrived in sensible clothes, the kind that didn’t demand anything dramatic of the world. Light pooled in clean strips across the floor when I opened the door to Marvin’s knock, three soft taps that sounded like courtesy instead of urgency. “You can say no,” he said, already holding up a thermos like neutrality could be weaponized into kindness. A small plastic container rode shotgun in his other hand. “Oats. Scientists insist.” Color crept up the edges of his ears when
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That’s the thing with people who have depression or PTSD—admitting they need help and staying consistent with treatment are the most difficult parts. Kent is lucky to have Marvin by his side, but when the depression spirals, it can make him unable to see who’s there for him at all.
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The condo had that after-hospital brightness even with the lights off—surfaces too clean, air too careful. The discharge papers sat on the dresser beside the boardwalk photo from 2016, me and my brother shoulder to shoulder, same stupid haircut, his grin already picking a fight with the lens. A knock, gentle, twice. The framed bleachers photo usually stands guard on the nightstand, two of us grinning back at the room; at the sound of Marvin’s knock I reached for it and tipped it gently
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The dream came on like a siren that didn’t know how to stop. Heat that dissolves the horizon. Radios spitting consonants into the heat. The stink of cordite and camel grass. My squad strung out across a courtyard that wanted to be safe and refused. Reyes left, Miller right, Doc too far from both. I’m yelling cover left but the word breaks its ankle on the step down. A door blows and the doorframe becomes a mouth—red tracers like teeth. Vic-2 coughs and dies. Someone’s throat is a straw with
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The nightmare didn’t wear Ken’s face. That was what unsettled me most when I woke. It left me in a street I hadn’t walked in years, heat clinging to the walls, dust and rot hanging in the air while radios cracked with voices that didn’t belong to anyone I could see. Someone shouted coordinates that came too late. Boots slipped. A body went down somewhere beyond a corner I couldn’t clear fast enough, and the certainty settled into me that stopping meant dying. I woke with my hands
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The nightmare came quietly, without sirens or shouting, shaped instead like a stairwell that smelled faintly of bleach and wet concrete, the fluorescent lights flickering overhead like they couldn’t decide whether to stay on. My boots didn’t echo when I moved, which was what made me stop halfway down and look back. Ken stood at the landing above me with his hands in the pockets of a jacket I hadn’t seen since high school, the Rutgers hoodie zipped halfway like he had just stepped out for coffee
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Morning came the way it always does when you haven’t really slept—too bright, too certain, like it expects you to participate. I woke to traffic and river-light leaking around the curtains, my phone still in my hand from wherever I’d dropped it during the night. For a second I didn’t know where I was. For a second I was eighteen again and the ceiling fan meant summer and Ken was down the hall making toast too loud. Then the condo asserted itself. Glass. Silence. Air-conditioning with o
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Nope, different Marvin. Glad you asked! I may wanna put some stories in the same universe in the future but as of now this one is a standalone.
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One morning I saw him again. He was coming back from a run, shirt damp at the collar, headphones resting around his neck. I was fiddling with the mailbox I still didn’t know how to open. “Hi. You’re not Thai, are you?” he asked. His voice had that careful city-English cadence that doesn’t trip over itself. “You’re new—across from me.” “Yeah,” I said. I held up the keycard like a confession. He smiled with his mouth first, then his eyes. “Welcome to the building.” “Thanks.”
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I don't have PTSD but I do battle my depression and I want this story depicts that as best as possible.
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Jet lag isn’t a clock; it’s a tide. It pulled me under and threw me back onto a schedule my body didn’t approve of. I woke before dawn with my heart already sprinting, the residue of dream still stuck to my ribs—gunfire with no muzzle flash, a radio full of ghosts, a voice that kept turning into Ken’s. The room was too new to hold it. I sat on the edge of the bed and let the air-con breathe for both of us, palms pressed together until the tremor chose a shape I could manage. By late mornin
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Haha yeah Kent's father is American Japanese and mother is Thai Chinese. The setting this time will be in Bangkok! Stay tuned!
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After losing his twin brother in a violent tragedy, a former U.S. Marine returns to his roots in Bangkok, hoping distance might quiet the past that refuses to let go. Haunted by memory, guilt, and a love he was never allowed to name, Kent struggles to rebuild a life that no longer fits the person he used to be. Across the hall lives Marvin—steady, observant, and patient in ways Kent doesn’t yet trust. What begins as proximity slowly becomes choice, forcing Kent to confront a different kind of fear: not losing the past, but moving forward without it.
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The gunfire always starts in silence. That’s the worst part—the nothing before the noise, the inhale that never ends. Then the alley folds inward, the dark burns white, and somebody screams my name in a voice that keeps changing—first the platoon sergeant, then a kid I carried to the bird once, then Ken, always Ken—and I’m running and not moving at all. My boots slide on blood I can’t find; the radio hisses like a snake I can’t grab. I shoulder a door that becomes a body that becomes my brother,
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The lot is half-lit like a bad confession. Sodium lamps buzz, drawing a small galaxy of bugs, and the only other sounds are truck brakes sighing on the highway and a recruiter’s laugh that keeps trying to be casual and failing. The building has that government smell even from outside—cleaner and paper and the breath of too many early mornings. Ken parks crooked on purpose, like he wants to steal an extra inch of space from time. The coffee he hands me is wrong—two sugars, no milk. He knows
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Aftermath: Rumors, Repercussions, and Really Bad Timing
Tony S. commented on Jeff Burton's story chapter in Aftermath: Rumors, Repercussions, and Really Bad Timing
I've finally caught up! I need a Ryan in my life. Please don't end it now. There's still so much more you can play around with. I need more! 😆 -
To be honest, even when I wrote this story, I had to really calm myself and tried to think that Kitt came from a very strict family (especially his dad) so he was so indecisive and scared of everything. It annoyed me to a certain degree but I made it through lol
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Sounds like I need to find myself this story and read it!
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Thank you so much. Please look forward to my new work soon. Though I'm not sure if it will be able to top this one and it will probably bring even more controversy 😝
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I want to take this opportunity to thank you every reader. I don't normally interact with you guys via the comment section but I have read every single comment and it has been fun to hear your thoughts on the story. Thank you again for sticking with me until the very end. I hope Matt and Kitt will be in your memory for a long time. See you again very soon.
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The first few days back in Lakehurst didn’t feel real—at least not to Kitt. Riverbend still clung to him like a second skin: the narrow apartment hallways, Mateo’s off-key humming drifting down from the third floor, the scent of lemon dish soap at Javier’s restaurant, Harbor trotting beside Tom on Maple Street, the clatter of basketballs echoing across the youth center parking lot. He had lived there long enough that those sounds had become home. And now he woke in his childhood bedroo
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The Saturday before Thanksgiving started ordinary and wrong at the same time. Matt woke to the pale strip of light cutting across his ceiling and the smell of coffee drifting up the stairs. His alarm hadn’t gone off yet, but his eyes were open and his chest was tight, like something inside him had been tugged awake before the rest of him was ready. He lay there for a moment, listening. His dad moving around in the kitchen. A cabinet closing. The low murmur of the news on TV. Somew
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By the time the week tipped toward Friday, Riverbend felt like it was holding its breath. Kitt felt it in small ways first. The way the sky seemed thinner in the mornings, washed out and pale, like someone had turned the color down a notch. The way the wind slid along the narrow streets sharper than before, pricking at his cheeks. The way sound carried differently in the courtyard of his building—an echo off brick that made things feel a little more hollow than usual. He woke on Wednes
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Thank you so much. I'm also not British though lol. However I read a lot and I do some research to make the story as realistic as possible. I am glad you find it covincing.
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