They crouched to peer beneath the stairs, their eyes reflecting the light like stars in the darkness. Not that anyone noticed. Not that anyone cared...
No one had while they lived, why should they care now? Now that they were as insubstantial as the breeze that leaked through the wooden boards that made up the house. No one knew where the breeze came from, only that it chilled them at odd times of the day and night. When it was especially windy outside, the skeletal trees would scrap against the house with gnarled limbs that stretched out like fingers. It...
Edgar watched the raven as the raven watching the moon. Silhouetted against the clouds, she was a beautiful sight: a black winged goddess caught within Diane's silvery glow. Little did he realize that the raven was taking orders, orders that Edgar himself would soon come to regret. The onyx bird turned predatory eyes upon the human that spied upon her, and he quickly closed the window, latching it from the inside.
Not that it would do him any good at all.
The bird landed, not with a bang but with a whimper.
Who would have thought that the poor little thing had so much to lose? She flew around the room, narrowly missing walls, windows, and draperies - but not the hands and heads of her human masters, must to their consternation.
Plop.
The whimper from the frustrated housewife echoed through the room, and she sighed as she put Pearlie-bird's favorite toy back in her cage. Then with one long glare at her feathered nemesis, she went to get a wet towel to save her favorite sweater.
Pearlie-bird, appeased, returned to...
Dear Past Self,
Let me tell you a few things you should know;
This is your life now.
I can see that gap between your little eyebrows begin to furrow up.
Well let me untangle it for you now;
It's not the breath catching breeze that I can feel from the top of the cliff,
or the chill that will roll up my spine when I hit the water,
and not even the risk of blood and ambulance sirens.
To fill in your answer blank, yes,
You will laugh in the spur of a bad moment,
And you will look...
The freaking tiny pebbles are getting all stuck in my shoes. Urgggg. This is stupid. I mean why did I come down to the lake anyway? I'm pretty sure I forgot to lock the door too.
Uriah always told me to get fresh air every now and then, and this shore sure has a breeze.
*A chuckle slips out of my lips.*
Yup, definitely a breeze.
This is stupid. I'm not a little kid. I can't kick off my shoes and play pirates by the water anymore. How could I play pirates by myself, anyway? Impossible.
But I can still...
A few words was all it would take.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard as I thought my plan through. I'd managed to hack into her Facebook account without much trouble. Who knew she still loved that old childhood pet enough to make it her password? It was too predictable.
I focused at the task at hand. She'd be home in a few minutes. I didn't have much time.
"Thanks for a great night sexy. Call me again anytime you're free. Next time I buy.''
That should do it. I hesitated. I'd hacked into Lauren's account, knowing that if I...
Rose wished she'd never agreed to that picture.
The look, the provocative stare, running her hands through her hair like that? That wasn't her. How did she expect to be taken seriously as an author when her picture looked like an ad for those 1-800 numbers, the ones they put on late at night with the skimpily clad women.
Maybe she could play it off. "I write humor; it was a joke!" she'd claim. The truth was, authors got paid almost nothing to bare their souls to their readers. It didn't matter if it was humor, scifi, or even detective...
“Send me a picture.” he’d said. Well, typed. It was that kind of initial flirting request. She had responded with a
:-)
a
:-P
and a
<3
and then, eventually, with a selfie.
Analysis of the GPS data encapsulated in the header file, compared with a record of CCTV locations, and her smiling face as a search parameter from stored footage, provided her entry point to the location. Cross-matched with the stored WiFi coordinates her smart phone had used to send the file, the exact location was confirmed. The “Le Poursuivant”
Inspection of the blurred background of the photo matched...
From the edge of a hole in the ground, lying on his side in a pool of his own blood, Jim looked around for his arm.
Eventually his glazed eyes drifted down the side of the pit, down to the bottom, where a mess of body parts mixed together like a good gumbo.
"Is that my arm?" Jim thought about thinking.
His ears rang, buzzed, sounded like being tumbled in a wave, with the adrenaline rush of wondering if you'll break the surface or if this is it.
He looked to the tree nearby, to wear a squirrel was peeking...
He'd spent hours in the living room, with a stack of tapes and the home theatre system, recording, rerecording, and generally keeping the neighbors awake. "It's sort of loud in here," I said to him.
He spent hours scrambling around the house searching for the sharpie to label his mixtape. "This will be perfect, if I can only finish it," he said to himself.
Unable to find a sharpie, he ran out the back door, grabbed his bike and churned off into the night.
I hopped in the car and followed behind at a safe distance. He stopped off at...