They called it co-dependent. They labelled it, the need to go from one relationship to another, to never be alone - they labelled it like it was bad. Like it wasn't what everyone did.
Alright, maybe - just maybe - she took it too far, maybe she was a little too reliant on whoever's hand was (by rights) hers at that moment. Maybe it wasn't what they had decided was healthy, but their healthy? They could keep their healthy.
Their healthy was not her healthy, and it wasn't what she wanted. They decided all of these things, using test after...
The white sedan zipped down the city streets, passing cars frantically, horn honking. Inside, Mark Strickland sat behind the wheel, his knuckles white as he gripped it. "You're gonna get us killed before we ever get there," Mary, Mark's wife, said calmly as she reached out and gently held Mark's hand, making him ease up on the hand control which regulated the gas pedal on the car. Her other hand rested lightly on her protruding stomach.
"Sorry," Mark said as he slowed the vehicle down. "I'm just anxious." His eyes lit up as he saw the hospital sign and quickly...
The gate closed behind them. Skidmark spun around and readied his rifle, scanned the scene and grunted to himself. He lowered the rifle slowly and turned back around. It appeared that there was no escaping the arena.
About fifty yards across from him, another contestant appeared, a tall, lithe woman in a jumpsuit, her Mohawk towering a good six inches above her scalp. From the way her eyes glowed red, Skidmark could tell that it was Annex Annie, reigning champion of Arena Combat League. In her hand was her trademark laser mace.
Skidmark cracked his neck in anticipation of a...
I've been following Soulscum for a while now. I don't know what he wants. I don't know why he's here. All I know is that he's left behind a string of broken storefronts and mass hysteria.
I had to do something about him.
He stopped to look through a window. "Maybe he's scoping the place out" I thought to myself. But he turned his head like he recognized something in there. That's when I realized where we were.
Soulscum was squatting right in front of my friend Tim's antique store. Lucy was inside trying to clean the place up a...
"Should I do it?"
"What if I am found out?"
The struggle raged on in Wendy's head. It had all been too much for her. She had lost her job just the month before. Now she was struggling to keep the strands of life together. There was no food in the refrigerator, bills were piling up, there were too many empty wine bottles and worst of all, her friends no longer called her.
"What can I do," she asked herself. "There's just no other way than this."
Sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the oven, she struggled with...
The beam swept across the water. The waves glistened in the darkness, tiny bumps of light in front of the tall tower. Her eyes had been scanning the glistening waters ever since the sun had set and she had realised his boat was not moored at the jetty with the others. Guy and Tom had walked along its wooden boards, dropped their eyes and tugged their caps when they'd seen her, but they'd made no mention of him. She'd almost called out after them, asked them where he was, but stopped herself before the his name could push itself from...
"Oh! Captian, can I help you with something?"
I groan inwardly. Dana is the new flight attendant, and a horrible flirt. She looks at me and pushes a clump of short blonde curls away from her eyes. I smile politely.
"Oh-no, I just need to use the, uh, lavatory."
Her eyes spark. She puts her hand on my wrist.
"Here, I'll show you where it is."
Seriously?! This plane is not that big and even if it were, I'm the PILOT. I sigh and remove her from my arm.
"That's fine I'll find it on my own..." I slide my...
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take. Nobody knows until they've been in those shoes.
"If he hit me, I'd hit him back!" scoffed one colleague.
"It should never happen twice." said my mum.
I know they mean well. I hope they do, but it's not so easy, is it? I mean, I've read the stats. More women are killed after leaving their abusive partner. I suppose its something to do with regaining power or something. Isn't everything about power. Being the top dog. I didn't want to be another number. A statistic to...
She was walking down the sidewalk in the downtown area of Seattle when she noticed a pile of white blankets and other pieces of cloth laying haphazardly on the right side of the sidewalk.
When she approached the bundle of the white blanket and other cloth, she briefly felt for it, thinking that there could be someone sleeping or even a dead body that was either abandoned, or may have died from an illness related to the recently unbearable heat.
However, she found that no one laid in the blankets, made obvious by the way that it was just tossed...
He grimaced as the flash went off, realizing too late that the final extant image of himself would so clearly portray the unease he was feeling at that moment. All well, he thought -- better that way.
On the one-off cedar deck table he had placed his remaining possessions. The cool glass beneath had the strange optical effect of making them seem blurred, though he knew his exhaustion was catching up with him.
"Ok, what do we do now?" he said to himself. Another sign, he chuckled, that things were going terribly.
He grabbed his smart phone first, and, unsurprised...