Other stories for this prompt

Sometimes I still feel like a kid - excited about silly things like jumping into puddles, watching how the water splashes out in every direction. It's nice to be the centre of something like that, something movable and real.

Especially now.

I'm so caught up in my own head. I'm worried about disappointing my parents, my professors, myself... it's hard to just live. It's hard to just follow my heart when I'm so concerned with what everyone else wants. The thing is, I don't even think anyone has such crazy expectations for me. My parents just want me to be...

It was a vast open space. Where the distant hills cling to the horizon, and the blue sky above curves to fasten to the mountain tops below, and desert sand cloaks sheet metal on the floor, stretching as far as the eye can see. It was an illusion…

This is the place where all things die.

This is the place where it ends.

A man in a dark suit approaches me and shakes my hand.

"I’m glad you could make it."

As blood runs across the sand, and the sun drops, and red sky filters between the moments of openness...

The anti-grav boots were worth every penny.

Shelly had saved for weeks, mowing lawns, delivering papers, collecting coins from every cushion in the house, to earn enough hard cash to buy them. Her mother had told her not to waste her money, that they were probably just galoshes with springs on the bottom, but the girl refused to be deterred. The magazine ad had proclaimed them anti-grav, and there was a Truth in Advertising law on the books, so they must be the real deal.

And she was right.

But not in the way she thought she would be.

Instead...

The angel wasn't at all what I expected. Jeans and hoodies weren't the kind of thing Divine Messagers should wear. And squeamish of spiders too!! He jumped up when the large hairy creature walked over his white trainers, I only noticed because I happened to drop my cell phone at that precise moment. As soon as he looked down he screamed as though all of hell was after him and leapt in the air.

John told me that he was getting therapy for his phobia and had been relegated to ordinary duty by his heavenly master, nothing spectacular for him...

Now, Ma'am, your academy sounds like a wonderful place for Peter, but there is something you should know about my son before you take him on. Well, you see, he's not like other boys. Yes, I know he looks normal enough but he... Peter is a very - how do I say this - high maintenance teen. He can - well, look out the window. See how he's not talking to the others? Oh, he's talking her out of his pocket. That's Tinkerbell, Ma'am. Shh - just watch. There's the pixie dust and... he's flying. (Oh, thank the good Lord...

The force pulled me off the ground against my will, I found myself sucked into the base of the UFO and into a large silver chair, restraints locked, eliminating escape.

Darkness, few bright pulsating lights in the distance, piano music filling the space. Terrified I tried pushing my wrists against the metal knowing it a useless waste of energy.

Loud whooshing sounds like an ocean in my ear magnified to unbelievable levels. Shutting my eyes expecting death then opening to find myself in bed alone.

The out of body experience manual beside me.

It worked.

You gave me the best summer of my life. The summer before I went to college, I wished that everything we had shared would never change.

We kissed on the bench in my backyard, in your car in the rain, at the movies...Then once I got to college, it was your apartment.

Back to summer; I can't think of better moments I could have shared with anyone else.

After my sophomore year, I didn't see you again. And I'll always think of the night you proposed, watching MTV, high, at 4am.

I will remember the way you used to look...

Screw destiny.

I smashed the crystal ball against the sidewalk, jumping on it to make sure it really was destroyed. It couldn't tell me anything anyway.

I was abandoned on a doorstep as a baby by my mother, and I always knew I wasn't going to be like her. I wanted a big family that I could give all my love and attention to.

But I picked the ball up at a flea market, and while polishing it, saw a doctor's report. It said that I was infertile. I didn't want to believe it, but I've always been superstitious, so...

The rush I felt skipping my way home, the breeze flowing through my hair.. there is nothing like it. There are so many things about being a child that simply have no analogue as an adult. Skipping carelessly down the middle of the street, climbing trees with no fear of falling, having no worries greater than what mom is making for dinner.
I long for those days. I miss the sparkle. I miss the sparkle and the freedom I didn't even realize I had. But now it's gone.
Is there a way to find sparkle once you grow up? Is...

He lept from the pavement like a, well like something that's not supposed to exist. Sparks of light crackled in the place where his sneakers just were. How is this possible? Is what he should have been asking. He really was thinking, Awesome!
He never really followed all that magician stuff. Not one to dress up like a wizard to see a kids movie at midnight. In fact he can remember the last time he voluntarily read or watched a fairy story of any kind.
It was undeniable. Flight. And not a super-powered leap in spandex flight but one that...