Introducing Murder, etc.
Rapid Eye Reality’s Brad Willis launches investigative podcast based in Greenville, SC.
Essays from an american mutt
The Grizzly Ate Your Baby
Several years back, my buddy and I made a wrong turn on the way to Virginia. Appalachia is the kind of place with towns called Tightsqueeze, so you’ll understand that any wrong turn is...
Atlas mugged
I have to imagine what it’s like to live in a house with one bathtub and eight other people. I have to imagine a home that’s not even 30% of the size of the...
American Just Desserts
It was a duplex in a mid-1990s tract home neighborhood where all the siding was the same color and an old folks home sat 50 yards off the back porch. We had a concrete...
Charity Worley: Tragedy compounded
“Nothing was normal that morning.” That’s what Linda told me one spring day around lunch time as she thought back to the little details of the last time she saw her daughter Charity alive....
American sunrise
They called it Freedom Day, and I was skeptical. That’s what I’ve learned to become in my four decades on this planet. I was taught to feel pride. I was taught to feel exceptional....
Meals, Mugs, and me
Mr. John opened his door. I never know when he’s coming. Sometimes it takes a minute. Sometimes I have to call to make sure he heard me knock. Thursday, it was as if he...
Mirrors & Mountains
My phone was on the bathroom counter while I brushed my teeth in front of the mirror. I stood there studying myself in the most mundane and unattractive of moments. My phone lit up...
Hey…I didn’t write that…
Some quick background: A few weeks back, I wrote a column for the Greenville Journal about something that had been on my mind. I missed The Handlebar. I know, it’s a tired complaint by...
Election Day 2016 from America’s Couch: A live blog
4:15am He came out of an indigo curtain, his buttons undone, his red tie hanging outside an open coat. The music was something out of a Hollywood exposition scene, neither dramatic nor any way...
The last lie you’ll believe
Somebody lied to you. You may not know it yet. You might be seething with hate. You feel it pressing down on your chest. You want to breathe, but you can’t. You see those...
We have clowns
“We have clowns.” “Hmm?” “Clowns. In the woods.” “Probably just a squirrel.” “You’re not listening.” “No. I am. You said we have clowns. Got it. Raccoon maybe.” “There were footprints. Very big footprints.” “Did...
Which one were you?
Were you the parent who ran into the package store 30 minutes before school let out, bought a handle of booze, and slipped back out into the sunlight, looking both ways to make sure...
About that story from The Bitter Southerner
Some of you have been reading Rapid Eye Reality since 2001. Other folks have found it in the years since then. Some of you are just arriving after having read “Bust” on The Bitter...
Angry Birds America
I just read there is going to be an Angry Birds movie, and my first thought was, “What could that film possibly be about?” The game wasn’t some epic tale that was easily adapted...