Keith Zarriello, lead singer/songwriter/guitarist for the Shivers, climbs on stage wearing a Scream mask. He begins sing-rapping through the mask’s distorted mouth hole, informing someone, perhaps the packed crowd at the Mercury Lounge, but just as likely some distant unrequited lover, that they’re going to want and subsequently need his love. Between half-verses he does a weird little dance, his arms and legs pumping up and down, and then, without warning, he’s brandishing a two-inch pocket knife. It’s not an exceptionally intimidating blade, basically on the order of the metal files sometimes built into toenail clippers, but Keith starts stabbing at his neck with the thing, and then a rush [...]

Chris Klucsarits's night was off to a rough start. Backstage at the New York Wrestling Connection Sportatorium in Deer Park, Long Island, Klucsarits was involved in a conversation that could only happen backstage at a professional wrestling event: He was arguing with a promoter about using a giant towing chain during his match. He also insisted on carrying a crystal-skull goblet with red Kool-Aid to the ring. Earlier in the afternoon, he’d been meticulously stacking random objects—photographs, lumber—over and over again, and to cap it off, he was having trouble sewing on his wig. In short, Klucsarits was having a manic episode.

“He was out of his mind,” [...]

The World’s Greatest Cowboy had to be peeled off his barstool and carried home the night he killed a man.

The next morning, in the presence of two deputies from the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Department, the cowboy sat, elbows on his knees, face protected from the light of day by a latticework of fingers, and tried to remember shooting Edward Delaney. He sucked in air, and smelled burnt powder. He breathed out, and caught a whiff of high-proof mucus. He remembered nothing.

Here’s what the deputies already knew: The night before, one of Delaney’s bartenders called him from the Corral Bar, which he owned, and told him that [...]

If you've ever been in therapy and liked, trusted and worried about losing your shrink, Emma Forrest has lived your nightmare. Three years ago, her psychiatrist died of lung cancer she didn't know he had. This was the man who rushed to her side at St. Vincent's after she downed a bottle of pills, who sang show tunes—"It's just his neurosis that oughta be curbed / he's psychologically disturbed!"—with her in sessions, and who tried, with no hint of salacious intent, to confiscate a fashion photo she showed him of herself, bleeding from self-inflicted cuts, in her underwear. With Dr. R's help, she "fell out of love with madness” [...]