Vanquished.
Caroline let out a little giggle. Three years, seven months, nine days, twelve hours and twenty-something minutes ago she'd eaten her last piece of chocolate.
"I never thought I'd manage it," she said to Paul as she stirred her coffee. "I'd been addicted for...ooh...I'm twenty-seven now so....twenty-one years?" She sipped her coffee, her tongue shocked by the burning liquid as she took her first caffeine hit of the day.
"So how's your New Year's give-up-smoking kick going?"
Paul shrugged. "S'okay. I had my last ciggie with breakfast on Monday."
"But that's two whole days into the new year!" said...
Andrew was the worst of all of them, though they were all pretty bad. By about that point, most of them were on the dance floor, throwing themselves around with strained smiles on their faces, or else trying to grind up on girls. Andrew was propped against a pillar though, barely able to move. He was nodding his head to the beat, though even that was pretty out of time. A thin, sickly trickle of sweat ran down the middle of his forehead, seeping out from under his ball cap.
An old Motown song came on, and Andrew thought he...
The sword hilt slipped from his hand as he staggered back. Leather-palmed gauntlets slick with blood, his own and that of dozens of men, could yet have gripped, had his hands the strength for it.
In the steaming corpse at his feet, the blade angled outward, once shining and ceremonial, now chipped and ruined by the armor and bone it had overcome. It had belonged to his father, to his grandfather, and to a king before that; when this was over, he thought, it would hang on his wall and never again leave his sight.
This was the last of...
Vanquished.
She looked at the body of her enemy lying there on the floor. She knew she should feel a sense of triumph, but instead there was only sorrow. Sorrow for the lost years, the million memories that would never be, the milestones both present and future that would never be shared.
For you see, the dead body belonged to her mother.
Her mother had run out on her father soon after her birth, and the girl had wondered all her life what it was like to have a mother. Someone to make sure her hair was perfect on picture...
"Vanquished."
"No, the word you're looking for is 'vanished.'"
"I always get those mixed up. I also get the words 'camel' and 'camera' mixed up, too."
"Don't fret, it gets easier with practice."
"Thanks for the stupor."
"I think you meant 'support."
"Oh, right."
"So, when do we get to stop pretending to be humans?"
Vanquished.
Seriously, that's how it felt as I walked down the hall back to homeroom. My hands were in the front pockets of my jeans, my head was down. I felt as if all the wind had been taken from my sails. A strong breeze could have knocked me over and I would have just curled up in a fetal ball in front of the beige steel lockers. When the bell rang, people would just step around me as I tried to become more and more invisible.
Mr. Garsh said he was sympathetic. I think they tell him to say...
Vanquished.
That's how Cindy felt as she picked up the books she had dropped in front of her locker. The mean girls had had their say, and she was out.
Cindy supposed she should've known better than to strike up a relationship with Gary, the science room geek, as in the back of her mind she knew she'd wind up in social Siberia. Now even Brady, her football player boyfriend - ex-boyfriend, make that, had knocked the books out of her hands in disgust as he stalked off.
She sighed, knowing her days buzzing around as a queen bee were...