Download Chereads APP
Chereads App StoreGoogle Play
Chereads

A Soldier Reporting

The Dawson Reports

Before I sit down and spend countless hours of my time writing this, I want to preface it by saying: this is all pointless. This whole report seems a little unnecessary, I mean I lived it all once, I don’t really want to have to live it again. I guess I owe them all though, don’t I. The office asked me to write this piece and I suppose they were bargaining for the angle of disbelief, a story so erratic and irregular in nature that no one could get their head around it. The whole thing barely makes sense to me in places and I had the privilege of witnessing it all first hand. This work will not only lose me my job, but will dash any work I write in the future through the mud and destroy my name and credibility as a reporter. They know this, they want me off their hands because they think I’m insane. Quite truthfully I don’t blame them I would have read a piece like this back in the day and laughed – Dawson’s finally gone nuts they’ll say – it was only a matter of time. The pressure, it must have finally got to him. The pressure never got to me, I was cool headed and down to earth throughout my entire experience. You want proof of that? I’m standing here in front of you alive and well. That’s all the proof you’ll ever need, and also all you’ll ever get, because this case isn’t going to be one of those long unsolved mysteries that goes down in the ages. No, no, no this case will be one of the ones laid to rest in the archive where the other graves of stories milked to their final usage go. This whole tale is too far fetched to grasp any serious public interest and therefore wont survive. As for me, well if I don’t end up in a psych ward then I’ll be considered lucky. Poor ol’ Dawson, old before his time, at least I get to grow old. If you take the time to read this I thank you, maybe putting it down into words one last time will help me finally make some sense of it. If you’re thinking I’m crazy I’m not – trust me on that one. That being said, it’s all a bit futile really – not as if anyone will believe me anyway.
madichii · 790 Views

A Woman Without a Mask

At 28, Clara Hayes has mastered the art of wearing masks. To her colleagues, she’s the perpetually cheerful graphic designer who never misses a deadline. To her overbearing mother, she’s the dutiful daughter hiding her anxiety behind polished smiles. To the world, she’s a woman who “has it all together”—except she’s crumbling inside. Clara’s life unravels during a corporate presentation where a panic attack strips her façade raw. Humiliated and exhausted, she flees to a quiet coastal town, renting a cottage owned by an eccentric, free-spirited potter named Marisol. There, Clara stumbles upon a dusty journal in the attic, its pages filled with haunting sketches and anonymous confessions from a woman who once lived there decades earlier. The entries mirror Clara’s own suffocating duality: “I paint myself in colors the world approves of, but my soul is a grayscale.” As Clara tentatively befriends Marisol and a reclusive widower, Eli, who runs the town’s crumbling bookstore, she begins confronting the lies she’s told herself for years. Through their unconventional guidance—and the journal’s cryptic wisdom—she starts shedding her masks one by one. But vulnerability comes at a cost: her corporate career teeters, her mother’s disapproval intensifies, and a buried trauma from her teenage years resurfaces, threatening to drown her newfound courage. When Clara’s raw, unfiltered artwork—created in secret—goes viral, she faces a choice: return to the safety of her old illusions or step into the terrifying freedom of living unapologetically. But the journal hides a final secret, linking Clara’s journey to the cottage’s mysterious past, forcing her to question whether true authenticity is a rebellion… or a homecoming.
Daoist5CDTxH · 1.7K Views
Related Topics
More