His opinions and wisdom were never appropriately valued. So, one day, he decided to simply stop speaking.
“I’ll show them all,” he thought in bitter anticipation. “Once they notice my silence, they’ll come running to apologize and beg – absolutely beg – me for my brilliance.”
He never spoke another word again.
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald has learned when to speak and when to remain silent, although he does get the two mixed up from time to time. Find him at liammacwrites.com.
His mother-in-law wears PTSD like a crown. She regales anyone within earshot about leaving her government job after her coworkers were mean to her and collecting disability for years.
He never mentions it, but he has not set foot in Lower Manhattan in the twenty-five years since the towers fell.
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald has seen some things and carried a few burdens. Some weigh more than others. Find him at liammacwrites.com.
They nestled in the branches of the dying oak out back – dark ink blots staining the bright sky. Only one had perched there at first, but another crow arrived each day to join the growing flock.
Watching them, he envisioned her, smiling grimly.
“Soon,” he thought, “we’ll have a murder.”
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald has had many thoughts – dark and light – nest in his head. Writing them down is one way he enables them to take flight.
Ghosts constantly visit me, whispering to me about the past.
Family members who have passed on. Friends who have fallen out of touch. Former lovers who haven’t called in years.
Worst of all is the ghost of the man I should have become. He torments me with every waking breath.
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald is constantly pestered by the ghosts of stories he intends to write. At least this one will stop whispering to him now.
My cellphone buzzed unnaturally loud in the quiet cabin, making several boys stir. Grasping blindly, I muted it and held my breath until the room slowly returned to silence.
The next three hours crawled until reveille, when I could finally return my mother’s call and confirm my father had died.
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald has written for decades. He finds some stories easier than others.
“Tell me again, Daddy.”
“Again?”
“Yes, please.”
“Well, my precious child, you need to grow up healthy and live a long, wonderful life. Because I love you so much that if anything ever happens to you, it will completely break me!”
“And then what?”
“Then… I will destroy the world.”
Rising like a phoenix from the ashes of his legal career, Liam MacDonald set forth to atone for decades of drafting countless legalese-ridden documents. He wonders whether the barest remaining mote of his soul can be saved.