What? No... It was impossible.
The sirens blared violently in my ears as our company raced to the breach. A creature, unlike any I have ever known about, escaped. Twice now, just this month. Something was off.
We rounded one corner after another, the vivid fear of each of us almost tasteful; a bitter copper mucus that stuck to every inch of our mouths. This creature in particular... Not two days past did it kill another researcher who was new to the facility.
And there it was, hungrily tearing asunder the last group sent in. Why? Oh... Oh god why?...
Some people would call my addiction a "trivial" case, and I would agree with them. Yes, trivia. That is my addiction. I love to learn and memorize totally random trivia. For example, did you know that drinking 16 ounces of ice water, requires the body to burn 17.5 Calories to warm the water up to body temperature? Fasinating! I know that some people would call me odd or insane but it isn't like my addiction is serious or anything. I mean, come on, it's not like owning all 54 volumes of the Guinness Book of World Records is insane or...
There was blood on my pillow. For that matter, there was blood in my mouth; It tasted like copper. I don't usually notice the taste of blood, but this caught me somewhat by surprise.
I got up, gargled some water, and carefully probed my mouth with my tongue. As far as I could tell, nothing hurt, and no more blood was coming out. Maybe I cut myself early in my sleep.
I got up properly, fully enjoying the freshly risen sun which was busy spraying it's yellow rays through the forest canopy. There was a fresh campfire pit just visible...
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs.
The twins had a knack for being in places they really shouldn't and this was no exception.
But really, this time it wasn't their fault.
They were identical in every way. Hair. Voice. Eyes. Mannerisms. Everything.
The two of them together, one would have never outdone the other. They were too nice for that. But if a situation required them to take on different roles, then you know that something is terribly wrong.
The one on the left had tears streaming down her cheeks. Her voice would shake now when she talked. She...
My four-year-old son was out of control. He tried to climb EVERYTHING, he made crazy yelling noises all the time, he had about a ten-word vocabulary, and he slipped out of his room every night to sleep with his pet jungle cats.
And it was all his grandpa's fault.
I should have seen it coming the day my son was born. I held him in my arms, showed him to my father-in-law, and said, "Hey, Dad, ain'tcha proud?" And he just twinkled his eyes at me, and ran his hand through his dreadlocks, and grunted bemusedly to himself.
I should...
The voyage was all fun and games until the iceberg came.
Nobody had invited the iceberg, and it seemed to show up out of nowhere. One moment, Rockwell was painting the dog on the banister, the next, the iceberg was full frame in the painting, like someone who hasn't noticed that you're taking a group photo and decides to walk right in front of the camera.
There was no use reasoning with it. It was obstinate, unmoving, rather dull to boot. At dinner that night, the usual good cheer in the ballroom had evaporated. Everyone was silent. The old colonel...
"Do you remember?"
"I remember"
"We were so..."
"Young"
"Stupid."
"We were kids."
"Would you still buy that excuse if one of yours said that to you?"
"Ha, I guess not."
"Because we were idiots."
"Clearly we haven't learned our lesson."
"Of course we have, there's some method to the madness these days."
"You call it method, I call it being surrounded."
"Go out with a bang though?"
"Always."
And with a nod, the two old friends picked up their paint ball guns.
"On three?"
"On three."
"One... two..."
Into the battle once more they ran, best friends who had...
I'm waiting in the emergency room. Fluorescent lights illuminate the sickly sterile floor, casting ghoulish reflections on the wall. The woman next to me coughs, and I shirk back.
"Sampson, Lila?" A plainly pleasant voice calls out. I blink before I get up.
The soles of my shoes stick to the floor, slick with residual cleaning fluid. My fingers have fallen asleep, pinpricks careen up through the tips.
"How is he doing," I ask, feeling disembodied. "Has it grown back?"
It was the fall that surprised me most.
Throughout my twenties, love had always been akin to a distant country: worth visiting perhaps, but out of my budget. I watched others travel to its shores with a lazy detachment and a very small amount of curiosity. There were other places to go. Other places to see. Love was not a final destination and those that went there seemed -- for the most part -- to be the eager embarrassing tourist types that I always avoided during my holidays.
Then I met Albert. The first thing I told him was that...
She looked at the words on the page. 'It was a pleasure to burn.' She read them upside down, glancing sneakily across the dark wooden table at the book open in front of her fellow library user. Kelly needed to get to work, she'd had a number of extensions already granted on her final essay, she had to get finished this week. But she couldn't take her eyes off the person in front of her. She was acting oddly, not turning the page, staring at that one sentence. Then, a giggle escaped the girl's lips and she flung her head...