It was a simple case of mistaken identity. That and trusting the good uniform while having no trust at all in the bad. Both of them are dangerous. But for Paul on this cloudy spring day it was a life changer.
"All I did was pick up an orange. What's wrong about that?" Paul asked the officer.
"Normally nothing. But this man here says he's seen you stealing fruit every day this week."
"That's crazy! I'm on work detail! Do you know how hard I had to work just to get this small amount of freedom? And now I'm getting...
The wise woman quietly opened the door, like a portal to the Other World, where a young woman's fist was held up as if to knock. Whether it was caught by her speed or its own hesitation, Meg wasn't sure.
"Expected was I?" a sweet voice entered the room.
The crone shrugged. "Bess is it?" At least it was mortal kin.
"We both know you would be here one way or another. One day or another."
"Do I have thy leave to enter, Elder One?" the spoken song continued. Sweet insolence lost on the witnesses.
"Do YOU not THOU me!"...
"You have six minutes" He said before he closed the heavy, metal door and slammed the heavy, metal bolt shut.
"Six minutes to do what?!" I shouted, pounding on the heavy, metal door in a dark room. I searched my pockets and found this match. Lucky me. I strike it, and find a treasure trove of books, but I can't read them with this. I throw open the first one I see, and all that is written across every page is "It was a pleasure to burn." in a serif font. I think it might have been Times New Roman,...
The car idled at the end of the line. Traffic hadn't moved in more than 20 minutes. She was getting more and more nervous. How would she ever make her flight if they didn't get through soon. She got out of the car and walkd a head a little. what was going on that was keeping traffic tied up. she walked a little further. she saw the crowd of people gathered in the street. The worried faces, the mumbling of low voices. In the middle of all this sat a little girl. She couldn't be more than 2 years old,...
They were back again. The Crasoons. And this time she was ready. Ever since they'd laid waste to her town, reducing it to wilderness in a matter of weeks, carrying off the wreckage with their dreadful claws, she had been planning. The white noise in her headphones would drown out their hypnotizing cries. She wouldn't go on a killing spree, no matter what the benign-looking destroyers told her. She was here for one purpose, the purpose she'd been training for for a year and a half: The destruction of the Crasoons. Her red shirt would lure them. And once they...
I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead.
Yeah, wasn't that my typical luck? My day in and day out? Slipping in and out from the friggin' jaws of death like a suicidal mouse playing with a cat? If this was what the rest of my life, which, granted, didn't look like it was gonna be very long, was gonna be, I wasn't so sure I wanted part of it. It got damn old, damn quick.
I'd faced down a lot of things in my...
Once there was a beautiful kingdom with a wise ruler, a red wolf demon. He was cunning and strong, and loved long. During an especially daunting hunt, chasing a herd of water buffalo, he was joined by a pack of ordinary wolves, gray and black and brown. They all enjoyed the feast that hunting together had brought them, and in the celebrations, he met the most beautiful she-wolf he had ever laid eyes on. Her fur was gray, with that glossy sort of sheen you only see in the mornings of the reddest of sunrises, a color that rivaled his...
Giving in wasn't an option anymore because I had given in too many times before.
I'd taken it time after time - too many times before, and this has me broken. I'm broken, broken from you.
You've simply abused me, in the finer way. The finer way where not all the cracks show, in the way that I can hold them in so that they are only something I know. In the way that only I will know when I see you again, and the cracks come stabbing on like a nightmare.
Now when you're feeling down, I won't risk...
"Bad way to go," said Detective Renfield. He was standing over the body (or what was left of it) with his arms akimbo.
I sighed, adjusting my hat to better shade me from the hot sun. "Fourth case this month," I reminded him. "Maybe city hall will finally get serious about the pigeons after this."
"Nah, I wouldn't count on it," my partner said cynically. "A few bums get eaten by pigeons, what do folk like them care?"
"According the statistics, the pigeon population's tripled in just a few months," I remarked, thinking back to my interview with Professor Gendry....
He ducks out of my way and a flash of white pain shoots up my arm. I look up and see the cracks in the wall left from the impact of my fist. I ball and unball my fist a few times and try to push the pain out of my mind. A sharp cry comes from somewhere and I think it might be my own voice. I lift a hand to my head and my fingers come away bright red. When did I hit my head? I push myself up from the floor and try to ignore the black...