New Year's Nightmares

Like all premeditated celebrations, New Year's Eve never turns out the way you'd expect. We would all love to sustain a pleasant champagne buzz, kiss our beautiful beau at midnight, and be enveloped in a haze of our closest friends. But reality consistently dictates seamier versions--we face long lines, drunken mobs, and winter's bitter cold. We've waited several hours in the dead of night for a cab to show up, that never does. We've had unprotected sex with a total stranger. We've had a drunkard belligerently smash his body against ours. We've woken up, disoriented and brutalized, on the steps of the Nordic Heritage Museum.

And for some of us, New Year's Eve has been much, much worse.

Seattle.net presents a collection of new writers' most memorable New Year's Eves. Some recollections are charming, while others are nightmarish. But whichever the case, each story not only questions our fairy-tale New Year's Eve ideals, it destroys them.