Fourteen for Flinching

Sometimes happiness doesn't register. Doesn't get through. Sometimes stories don't have happy endings and in those cases something else is usually going on: Characters are at cross purposes at best or at worst, cannot abide one another. Motivations are questionable or even downright abusive. Someone craps on everyone else's optimism. Such stories are now and then entertaining but almost always instructive, even surprising. When they're all of the above, sometimes a chill runs up your spine; sometimes you shake your head and say, "Whoa." Sometimes, you even flinch... maybe fourteen times.