These aren't the stories your mother told you.

No, these are the other stories.

Stranger in the Night

Written by Matt Butcher

Narrated by Joanna Coulton

I'd always been a straight-laced girl

so eager to maintain the approval of my parents

that I had turned down countless invitations to parties

and the advances of the

guys at school that had anything less than a squeaky clean track record. I was saving myself

for marriage, as this was what I had assumed they'd wanted. I went to church every Sunday with them,

to soak up the sermons our elderly pastor preached from his pulpit and did my best to live my life accordingly.

Two months ago, however, everything changed.

My mother was run off the road by a drunk driver and left comatosed.

She couldn't even breathe unassisted.

Her absence around the house took a heavy toll on my father,

and he'd taken to drinking all hours of the day to gnail the pain. I still went to church,

alone, each Sunday, but the pastor's words didn't seem to touch me as they had before. The message

of hope and God's divine plan no longer seemed to make sense.

How had he seen fit to leave my mother and father in this state?

How was such a cruel fate fair?

It was more than I could fathom.

...