Jane made a desperate grab for the coin, spinning in the air. With a flip, Safura had set her fate in motion. Heads, eternal life; tails, never-ending darkness.
She had to catch the silver disk before it landed on the platform.
Panic filled her like water in a vase, her fear overflowing and spilling onto the pavement, evaporating almost instantly in the heat of the noonday sun. "Gods DAMMIT!" she cried, tripping and falling toward the still turning disk. Her fingers grazed the silver, and it landed, still spinning lazily, on its edge.
"You lose," stated Safura. His mouth turned...
"I don't care if I get wet!"
Eric snatched at her hand, but Angel quickly pulled away. She let her hand extend beyond the umbrella's translucent canopy, its special shielding against radiation and chemical contaminants having been turned off despite Eric's warnings.
"You can't do that!" he cried.
"Why not?" she said. "It's been years since the fallout. Why use this stupid shield anyway? What difference does it make if things APPEAR normal?"
Tears streaked her lover's face, but he said nothing.
Disgusted with the futility of it all, she hit another button on the handle and turned off his...
On the journey back from the Reichenbach Falls, Sherlock Holmes began writing his memoirs. The book was sent to a trusted friend and kept hidden until 2013 when it was accidentally found in an attic.
John Watson was clearing out his uncle's house, lugging down old boxes of musty clothes, books and Christmas decorations down the rickety ladder and throwing everything into the skip on the driveway.
The book fell out on top of his paint stained trainers. Something about the handwriting caught his attention. He's just read a book on graphology and thought it would be interesting to see...
My email has been compromised, nevermind, nothing I write or receive is of any importance. The girl on the bench was full of self pity, having one of those 'the world is against me' moments we all get when we have too much free time and not enough to do. Usually by choice as usually there is too much that needs to be done but we prefer to surf the internet, read self help, watch tv or simply drink ourselves to oblivion, overwhelmed at the mess we ignore.
Jodie was a successful fantasy fiction writer, had a reliable good looking...
When I lost my mother in the store, I was only three years old. I can't remember what happened but I still wake up in a sweat most nights, an innate sense of abandonment, as though I have been on a mission to the moon, stepped outside the spaceship for a walk across the lunar landscape and left behind. Terror.
Mother never recovered from her fear. She spent the rest of my childhood in a daze from a mix of prescription pill cocktails, agrophobia and alcohol. Dangerous combinations.
She was currently in a secure medical facility, unrecognisable from the pretty...
The giant surveyed the landscape, wondering where all the people were. Truth was, he didn't know he was a giant. Everyone else he had ever come in contact with was a giant, so humans - the little people he had no knowledge of - didn't exist in his mind. Yes, he saw them, but they were nothing but insignificant little insects, ants, only there to annoy and crush.
He marveled at this world, so green and rocky, so unlike the limitless cloudy floors of his huge domain. He reached down and picked a few blades of grass, and at once...
In 1921, he flew from the Great Rift Valley, along the trails left by the ancient Martians, to find the Temple of the Sun. It was buried, like so much else on Mars, in red sands over the course of millennia, but that meant nothing when you had a native to escort you to their ancestral home.
"So, how can we breathe here?" Pete asked the small, silver creature before him.
It sat in the biplane, strapped in, looking ridiculously small in the pilot's seat. "Air bubble," it replied, fiddling with the dials.
Pete had never flown in a biplane...
The dangers of air surfing had yet to be explored. Jenna had never been shy when it came to taking risks, yet now she found herself in the embarrassing position, almost literally, of talking out her ass.
"Can you help me down, please?"
"What happened to 'I'll be a living legend?'" quipped her boyfriend, Bob. "I mean, I've got to say I'm enjoying the view."
Dangling, upside down, as the tide came in, did little to improve Jenna's temper. "Just pull me down; will you?"
"Just as soon as I finish filming. My followers on YouTube are gonna LOVE this!"...
The power of flight could be transferred.
When Marisa first discovered this, she was thrilled. As far as she knew, other 'birds' could only fly themselves, the envy of other humans. Being part of the elite wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Envy was a problem. Bitterness led to hate led to violence.
Her mother had told her to hide her abilities, that others would fear and resent her. But this new ability changed everything; didn't it? Instead of hating her, she could grant that power to others. What wouldn't those stranded on the land give to be...
The embroidery was hard to steal. Laser beams criss crossing the museum walls and floors. Two hours later I was opening the bag of cash, counting, shaking hands with my client, ignoring the warning thoughts invading my head since the moment I'd been hired.
'Moonlite Glow' was cursed. Apparently, anyone who handled it suffered misfortune. The last four owners died unexpectedly, gruesome and slow. One fell out of his bedroom window straight onto steel sharp railings, not found until the next day. Another drowned in his hot tub after his big toe got stuck somehow. He shut off his mind...