Endurance Stories
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Endurance
A cathedral hush ripples through Lincoln Park Church, the kind that makes even the pews feel nervous. Sunlight, filtered through stained glass, pools at odd angles across the flagstone, painting prisms onto the polished shoes of the guests as they wait, shifting from side to side, unsure if they are part of a celebration or a powder keg. The floral arrangements are excessive: creamy roses and white hydrangea crowd every surface, as if to pad the room against future blows.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
Endurance
The bridal suite at Lincoln Park Church is the size of a Manhattan apartment, with sunlight striping the parquet floor and everything—mirrors, crystal vases, even the pale blue couch—casting a soft, reflective glow. The air smells faintly of gardenias and last-minute nerves. Monica stands closest to Abby, all platinum hair and sharp, white teeth, her gold satin dress so tight it squeaks when she moves. She’s already on her second glass of prosecco, because “if you don’t start now, what’s the point?” Carla flanks the other side, shorter, slicker, her laugh echoing off the marble tile as she toggles between taking selfies and holding court about the champagne.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
Endurance
The night before his wedding, Michael paced the length of his apartment, his footsteps tracing a nervous path across the hardwood floors. The Chicago skyline glittered beyond his windows, but he barely noticed it, too consumed by the knot of anxiety tightening in his chest.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
Endurance
It’s the early edge of happy hour at Shelly’s Pub, which means two dozen people all talking over each other, four TV screens tuned to games no one’s really watching, and an undercurrent of beer-fueled anticipation that thickens the air. The lights have been adjusted for “golden hour” according to Shelly’s careful ritual: low enough to hide flaws, bright enough to make everyone think they’re in on something. The tap lines hiss and the lowball glasses clink and, somewhere at the end of the bar, Michael slips in with the anxiety of someone who both belongs and very much does not.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
Endurance
The next morning at Shelly's apartment, just above her pub. Morning is a joke, and Abby is the punchline. There’s a high C ringing through her skull, so sharp it could slice through drywall. She opens one eye, then the other, then immediately regrets it; even the filtered light slanting through the sheer curtains feels like a laser pointer aimed at her brainstem. Her tongue tastes like old pennies and the inside of a dead Duracell. The room, her room, is an archaeological dig: empty water bottles, bobby pins, one high heel wedged in the radiator, and glitter. So much glitter. It catches on the curve of her arm and pools in the bedsheets, the aftermath of a war fought entirely with craft supplies and bad decisions.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
Endurance. Content Warning.
Club Euphoria smells like sugar and ozone, like a birthday cake left out in the rain and then struck by lightning. The club’s double-doors open and shut like a humidifier set to maximum, belching chemical fog into River North’s damp summer air. Inside, everything is backlit by bruised purple and electric blue, a visual conspiracy of LEDs designed to convince you that time, and possibly dignity, have been suspended for the duration.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
Endurance
Doug’s apartment smells like a cross between a locker room and a brewery, which is to say: exactly as he wanted. There are five kinds of chips on the coffee table, arranged with the military precision of someone who has watched too many Food Network marathons. The walls are a riot of Cubs memorabilia, dorm-era posters, and one gigantic, ironically naked calendar girl that has clearly been hanging since before Doug started working at Cadabra. The sectional is a hand-me-down from Doug’s cousin, the cushions permanently molded into the ass-prints of everyone who’s ever watched a game here.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
Endurance
There’s a particular shade of light in Shelly’s Pub, the kind that never shows up in photos, only in memory—liquid, dense, somewhere between amber and the last hour before sunset. The woodwork wears a patina of a hundred thousand spilled drinks and the bar stools tilt at odd, familiar angles, already half-mapped to the regulars’ hips. On a Thursday at half-past seven, the crowd is local: a few construction guys with cement still under their nails, a pack of grad students orbiting the trivia screen, and in the southeast corner, a round table commandeered by five women who look like they’ve come for a meeting but will not, under any circumstances, refer to it as such.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
Endurance
"Lenny’s Lanes" exists in the kind of suburban time warp where it is always ten years too late for irony and five years too soon for nostalgia. Every Tuesday is league night, but tonight it’s not. The oil-slicked lanes gleam under the migraine of fluorescent lights, and the aroma of scorched nacho cheese and gym-sock rental shoes hits you as soon as the automatic door shoves you inside. Pop music from two presidents ago pulses through speakers patched with masking tape, the volume set to “deafen children.” At the far end, a retirement-age man with two championship patches on his polo shirt throws a strike with balletic grace. His ball hits the pins with a sound like a car crash in miniature, but no one claps.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
Endurance
The Beeks residence in Kenilworth glows, as always, under the relentless discipline of maintenance crews and Melanie’s weekly conscription of neighborhood teens to pull weeds or touch up the trim. The white of the siding is so clean it hurts to look at in direct sunlight; the shutters a mathematically precise navy, not quite black, matching the flag that flies stoically beside the front door. Even the boxwoods flanking the porch are squared off at crisp right angles, daring the unkempt oaks of the neighbors’ lots to spill over with so much as a single leaf.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
Endurance
Brewed Awakening is not the best coffee shop in Chicago, but it is, arguably, the most committed to the bit. The “Grand Opening” banner on the door is faded from three winters of north-facing wind, the tip jar by the register rotates weekly between “Help Me Buy New Sneakers” and “Our Cat Needs a Dental Plan,” and the tables wobble unless you seat yourself with a practiced hand. Inside, it’s a stew of old couches and misfit chairs, the air thick with the sweet-burnt smell of espresso and that background jazz every neighborhood café think will make people linger.
By Endurance Stories5 months ago in Fiction
