Tony S.
-
Posts
259 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Forums
Stories
- Stories
- Story Series
- Story Worlds
- Story Collections
- Story Chapters
- Chapter Comments
- Story Reviews
- Story Comments
- Stories Edited
- Stories Beta'd
Blogs
Store
Help
Articles
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by Tony S.
-
Thank you everyone for reading along. I hope you enjoyed the journey. While I originally wanted to continue the story, I feel that Kent’s chapter has naturally come to an end. He isn't a hundred percent well yet, but he is healing and growing more self-aware. My hope is that this story brings a deeper understanding of depression, PTSD, and grief. To anyone diagnosed with depression, or anyone learning how to care for a loved one struggling with it, I hope Kent's story brings you some comfort and helps you cope.
-
Dr. Ratchanon’s office looked exactly the same as it had the last time I sat in it, which felt almost absurd given how much had shifted inside me. The same neutral walls. The same low bookshelf. The same two chairs facing each other at a deliberate angle that discouraged confrontation and encouraged honesty. I lowered myself into the chair slowly. The jet lag had mostly faded, but my body still felt like it was recalibrating to humidity and routine. Or maybe it wasn’t jet lag at al
- 8 comments
-
- 25
-
-
-
Bangkok met me the way it always did, without ceremony and without apology. The airport doors parted and the air folded around me—dense, humid, faintly sweet with jet fuel and street food and the metallic trace of rain waiting somewhere beyond the skyline. Traffic pulsed outside in familiar disorder, taxis inching forward, motorbikes threading between them with reckless grace. New Jersey had felt suspended in memory, like a photograph I had stepped back into for a necessary errand. Thi
- 5 comments
-
- 21
-
-
-
Maybe citrus would be more realistic 😆 Why did I go with palm tress in the beginning?
-
The morning after the verdict, the house was quiet in a way that felt almost staged, as if the world had decided to dim itself in recognition of something concluded. No reporters. No calls from detectives. No legal updates. The machinery of justice, which had been grinding steadily for weeks, had finally fallen silent. I woke earlier than I needed to and lay still, staring at the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. Jet lag had been tugging at me all week, pulling me awake at hours that belonge
- 8 comments
-
- 24
-
-
-
The courtroom was smaller than I expected. Not physically small, but contained—wood-paneled, fluorescent-lit, arranged with an almost bureaucratic indifference to the magnitude of what it held. The gold and blue seal of the State of New Jersey hung behind the judge’s bench. The air conditioning hummed softly. Papers shuffled. Someone coughed two rows behind us. It felt obscene that something so ordinary could house the worst night of my life. I sat between my parents, hands restin
- 8 comments
-
- 22
-
-
-
Dr. Ratchanon’s office was quiet in a way that never felt performative. There were no dramatic design choices meant to signal calm, no overthought décor. Just a desk, two chairs facing each other at a comfortable distance, a low bookshelf against the wall, and a window that let in steady afternoon light without turning harsh. It was the kind of room that did not try to impress you. It simply existed and waited for you to do the same. I sat across from him, hands loosely clasped, elbows rest
- 7 comments
-
- 21
-
-
-
-
-
Just wanna say that although I don't reply to many comments, I've been reading all of them and I'm very thankful. It's always good to see you guys discuss each chapter or share your thoughts. So thank you very much, guys.
-
The decision settled into me long before I said it out loud. For several days I carried it the way you carry something fragile in your pocket — aware of its shape, testing its weight against the lining of everything else. It wasn’t dramatic or reactive. It didn’t feel like defiance or surrender. It felt like… alignment. That was how I knew it was real. Dinner that night was simple — fried fish, stir-fried vegetables, rice that Devon insisted was too dry even though he ate two serv
- 8 comments
-
- 21
-
-
-
That night, back inside my condo, the quiet felt different from the kind that had followed courtrooms and police calls. It wasn’t heavy with anticipation. It wasn’t sharpened by calculation. It felt… open. I stood by the window for a long time, looking out over the river, the lights from ICONSIAM still glowing faintly in the distance like something we had just stepped out of rather than returned from. The day replayed in fragments — Devon’s grin at the door, Marvin’s tentative smile on the
- 6 comments
-
- 21
-
-
-
-
When I knocked on Marvin’s door that late morning, it was Devon who opened it. He blinked at me once, then leaned one shoulder against the doorframe and gave me a slow, exaggerated once-over as if I’d shown up for inspection. “So this is happening,” he said, voice loaded with theatrical gravity. “It’s barely noon,” I replied. “You’re acting like I brought a corsage.” “It’s the energy,” he said. “It’s very ‘I made a reservation.’” From somewhere inside the apartment, Marv
- 9 comments
-
- 22
-
-
-
Thank you so much!
-
Good catch! Sorry about that. Fixed!
-
The hospital lobby felt different the third time I walked into it, though nothing visible had changed. The same polished floors reflected the muted overhead lights. The same volunteer at the desk offered a practiced, gentle nod when I gave my name. The same faint scent of antiseptic and coffee lingered in the conditioned air. What had shifted was not the space but my posture within it. I was no longer bracing for interrogation. I was not here because something had detonated. I was here because I
- 8 comments
-
- 23
-
-
-
The shift did not announce itself with triumph. It arrived quietly, in the way structural changes always do — not as noise, but as alignment. Lieutenant Somchai called in the early afternoon while I was seated at the dining table, sunlight falling across the wood in a clean, untroubled rectangle that had nothing to do with the week we’d just endured. His tone was different this time. Less neutral. Less procedural. “We have additional cooperation,” he said. The third man — the one
- 6 comments
-
- 21
-
-
-
The quiet after a legal maneuver is never truly quiet. It is evaluative. For three days after the hearing, nothing happened in any visible way. No envelopes. No men lingering in parking structures. No legal filings with carefully restrained language. The river outside my windows carried ferries in its usual rhythm, traffic stalled at the same intersections, the elevator chimed on schedule. If someone had not been watching the edges before, they might have mistaken it for resolution. I
- 7 comments
-
- 19
-
-
-
-
Legal pressure, when it came, did not arrive as shouting or threats. It arrived printed on thick paper with restrained fonts and the faint smell of toner. The envelope was delivered mid-morning, routed properly through the building’s front desk and signed for with the kind of bureaucratic calm that made it impossible to mistake for coincidence. I was at the dining table with my laptop open when the intercom buzzed, sunlight flattening itself across the wood in a pale rectangle that looked a
- 7 comments
-
- 19
-
-
-
The new routine did not arrive all at once; it assembled itself gradually, piece by piece, until one morning I realized I was living inside it. I started texting Pete before I left the condo, not because he demanded it every single time but because the act of reporting my movement steadied something in me that had begun to feel unmoored. The messages were simple and stripped of emotion—Leaving now. 8:15 AM. Taking Devon to school. Or Grocery run. 5:40 PM. Central branch. No commentary, no s
- 7 comments
-
- 19
-
-
-
-
By the second week after I’d started medication, the city had begun to feel subtly misaligned, as if someone were nudging its pieces while I wasn’t looking. Bangkok hadn’t changed—traffic still snarled at the same intersections, street vendors still called out over grills that hissed and smoked, the river still carried reflections of glass towers and ferries in long silver streaks—but my relationship to it had shifted. I noticed hands more than faces. Reflections in windows. The way cars li
- 7 comments
-
- 21
-
-
-
-
-
-
Marvin didn’t knock. Not loudly—just three firm taps that carried through the condo while the news murmured from my tablet on the kitchen counter. I was still standing there with a mug cooling in my hand, the anchor frozen mid-gesture beneath a blurred still of a parking lot I recognized far too well when I went to pause it. I crossed the kitchen and opened the door. Marvin stood in the hallway with his bag still over one shoulder, hair damp from humidity, expression set into some
- 11 comments
-
- 19
-
-
-
-
-
Friday evening slid into the neighborhood with its usual mixture of humidity and noise, the sky paling toward amber as the sun sank between high-rises, traffic bunching up along the main road while neon signs hesitated before committing to night. I realized halfway through tidying the bathroom that I needed to buy new toothpaste. I slipped into shoes, grabbed my phone from the counter, and headed out, nodding at the security desk on my way through the lobby before cutting across the drivewa
- 5 comments
-
- 22
-
-
-
-
-
Dinner smelled like something Marvin had coaxed rather than cooked—ginger blooming in hot oil, citrus threading through garlic, steam drifting lazily toward the ceiling as if the meal itself had decided it wasn’t in any hurry to be finished. Devon hovered near the counter with a bowl balanced in one hand and his phone in the other, scrolling while very obviously rehearsing an argument he planned to pretend was spontaneous. “So,” he said, which was always a warning, “Scott was wondering
- 6 comments
-
- 24
-
-
-
-
The feeling didn’t arrive with any particular drama. It slipped into my days the way humidity does, unnoticed at first, until I realized my shoulders had been tight for hours and my eyes kept drifting to reflections in glass doors, polished car panels, storefront windows—anything that might confirm or contradict the pressure humming along the base of my skull. Someone behind me. Close enough that my body cared. Not close enough to be obvious. I altered my route walking b
- 5 comments
-
- 19
-
-
-
-
Dinner ended the way most evenings had lately: quietly, stitched together with small pieces of normal that felt almost fragile. Devon dominated the table as usual, launching into a long complaint about a group project that had apparently been hijacked by a boy who refused to label axes and a girl who believed calculators were “spiritually limiting.” Marvin listened with patient concentration, asking the occasional clarifying question like he was conducting a deposition instead of indulging
- 5 comments
-
- 20
-
-
-
-
-
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
- 7 comments
-
- 19
-
-
-
