Balanced on the line, he told her again, "Put it down!"
"Come on, then," she said, impishly.
"I can't. You know I can;''t cross the line. I'll have to go back."
"Why?"
It's just how it works. It's a liminal space. I'll explain if you put the book down and step away."
She looked baffled, then nervous. "I can't! It's stuck to me."
On no! "Then bring it to me. Quickly. Please."
"What's happening." Her voice was flat, lacking timbre. She was fading and I couldn't get to her. I only had seconds.
"Stay where you end up. Don't move....
He had had that dream again. He had dreamed about that walk and the ice sculpture many times. But this was the first time, he had floated up above the forest.
"If I hadn't woken up, what would I have seen?" he wondered.
A month later, he had the same dream again. And this time, he floated above the forest and went higher and higher into the sky.
The earth below him shrunk and everything grew smaller until the forest was just a speck in the distance.
"George," he heard a voice calling. It was the same voice he had...
The words from the poem mirrored the scene in front of him.
"Two roads diverged in a wood," he recited aloud.
"Which one should I take," he thought as he stood at the junction of the two paths in front of him leading down the dark forest.
He had come out for a walk to clear his head. He closed his eyes and took a step forward and another and another...
Half an hour later, he stood in front of a giant tree. He looked up into its branches and a large pile of snow fell on him. He grabbed...
The words hovered beneath my glowing finger, power incarnate. I lifted the text, spinning it lazily in the air, before hurling the curse at the image of my nemesis.
The photo I had ripped from the backcover of her book dissolved, dripping onto the table, her face hideously deformed, the black ink staining the tablecloth beneath.
"She thinks she can write horror," I said, the deathly silence of the basement swallowing my words. "She doesn't know what horror is." I smiled. "Yet."
When he'd signed up to visit strange new worlds, he'd never envisioned this. He turned slowly in the glass globe, devoid of even snow or glitter, and bemoaned his fate.
He should have known better than to answer an ad for interstellar traveller posted in the local classifieds.
Crap.
She didn't look at him anymore. He knew that it was too late for their marriage. Betrayal this time was over stepping the boundary. Twice already. They passed days and nights like strangers, polite yet unemotionally connected.
Lisa did not know what to do. Never expected to be in this position. Couldn't face the future, alone. Yet knew she couldn't bear to be in the same room with him let alone in the same house.
None of her family were around anymore, she didn't want to have to move again, relocate, make new friends, go over the same lies. She...
The boy continued staring at the empty space that wasn't empty. Air surrounded him, invisible oxygen that he couldn't see but was nevertheless vital. And of course, the creature was there.
"Hello?" he called tentatively.
"Hello," called the voice of a young girl. The water stirred around the hole in the water, and a female form appeared. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was just curious."
The boy continued to stare. The girl had hair the color of flame and a smile like no other. He was particularly worried about her sharp teeth.
She laughed, a sound like breaking glass, and...
The plumber did not arrive on time. Later I found out he'd been fishing in Plantation Lake, that place near Kingswood with the wooden shack, boats for hire and nasty looking employees that always gave me the shivers.
Luckily I managed to run the hot taps and circumvented a disaster with the overflow. Called in sick so I could monitor the situation, spent most of the time going between the bathroom, tv and excercise bike.
Tom, the plumber never did fix the problem. He drowned, his line tangled with something the few available witnesses described as 'unexplainable to identify'.
An...
The implant's biggest drawbacks were the headaches. The gear-man had assured her that would abate in time, but meanwhile she was dying for an injection, or even a good, old-fashioned aspirin. Too bad the chemicals would interfere with the implant's bonding process.
Text passed before her eyes, the latest news, the day's top story, ads for sexual aids and fast food joints. She blinked, but the visuals refused to recede into the background of her consciousness. Could she really take another day of non-stop sensory stimulation before she could control her access?
Resigned to stay plugged in, she laid back...
Maurice looked at the empty mailbox and sighed.
His pension was supposed to be delivered today; first of the month, just like always, but instead the inside of the cold metal tube held only a few bills and a postcard advertising the latest whatever that he didn't need. What he needed was his damn pension.
He took a deep breath and took several careful steps back up his driveway to his front door. He checked around the bushes, painfully walked the outer perimeter of the house, even checked the cat flap, but no pension.
Son of a bitch, those damn...