Midnight on the roof. lt was always midnight up there. Something about a previous tennant of the penthouse, and some demigod battle to save the Earth (again). So, the inhabitant of 63B was quite unusual, due to the fact that she was blissfully unaware that none of the other inhabitants were in any way human. It quite endeared her to them, this special lady in her unspecialness. She even managed to use Mjolnir (Thor,s Hammer) to hang a picture one day, politely requesting it of him when he came to visit Loki, who was imprisoned on the fourth floor.
The year was 1986. Sorry I made a mistake, it was 1896. The day my grandfather made his first monster made from ancestral skeletons and fresh body parts (carriage accident) sneaked out of the family vault, brought to life from a mixture of alchemy, science, advance biology and sheer madness.
I wish it was 1986 because I would have killed the freak hybrid and put an end to what followed.
My family have been living on the island with unnartural servants and companions, the misfits made from grandfather's experiments and their miraculous offspring.
I am as much of a prisoner...
Shannon sat up, her eyes wide open. She wasn't sure if she was awake or asleep. She looked around the room (dirty socks, cat puke in one corner, empty Miller cans, a laundry basket filled with clean clothes) and wished it was all unfamiliar. She looked at the man next to her. His back was smooth and tanned. A tiny mole winked at her from his left shoulder blade. She wished he was a stranger.
Shannon lay back down. The pillow was damp with sweat, her sweat. Had she been dreaming or coming out of a fever?
"Where are you...
Pointing skyward, his finger aflame.
"Can you come here a minute?"
Trying to catch the attention of surf but drawing only seagulls, which landed on his fingertip and looked around stupidly in the low sky of November.
My whole life is a finger on fire, and wrong things coming to help. A man wearing a hat. Some flotsam. A ship in the dead of night, a drunken captain
"Quack quack quack!"
*Translation: OH NO! BP!
"Quack quack quack quack."
*Translation: I'll have to move to another pond now...
"Quack quack..."
*Translation: Stupid #$#@%$%$#^#$ humans.
"Quack quack quack..."
*Translation: Or maybe I'll just steal all their rubber duckies. See how they like losing something.
"QUAAAACKKK!"
*Translation: MWAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Mr Duckie went to become the Robin Hook of all ducks, stealing rubber duckies from all the human children and all the grownups who still like flotation toys. Right now he has a large organization, SOPWRD (Save Our Pond With Rubber Duckies) and has declared Ernie from Sesame Street as Duck Worlds...
I hear the crunch underneath my foot. I look down and see beneath me the perfect array of multicoloured dead leaves. I bend down to pick one up and examine it softly with my fingertips. It's a dark shade of red, almost brown, but it still has a tint of green around the edges; as though the leaf had died too soon. I smiled, before scrunching it in my hand and feeling that satisfaction of the noise it made.
I continued walking along the path in the woods. My dog was way ahead of me now and probably not wondering...
Some days you feel every second of your age. Becca looked at the balloons in her hand and back towards the building. Seven years hard labor, or so it felt, and she was still working in the same department in the same job for the same company.
A breeze lifted her hair and tugged at the balloons. They struggled against her grip, the ribbons seesawing in her hand as if each wished for freedom.
"What are you doing, Becca?" The voice reached out to her but the woman stared up at the floating orbs. The sun glowed through them and...
I am love with a robot. As she undresses for bed I know that her body will be perfectly matched to mine, her skin soft to my touch, her responses exactly what I need to hear. She wears whatever I suggest and buys what I tell her. We are the perfect couple.
The next morning she was gone. Note on the pillow. Sorry I can't do this anymore. I need to be free to be myself. She is in the living room, unplugged, wires pulled out of her heart.
And so another group assembled. The moon shone like the eye of a great forgotten deity, peering down on the hooded figures who worked tediously on the pyre between them.
Old branches, gnarled and bony, reached into the pyre as more hoods broke into the meadow. No one knew why they had been gathered here, in the deep wood that bordered the black lake. But, like their ancestors, the call to arms was one they could not deny.
And as sudden as they all appeared, a creature formed from within the darkness, dark green flesh glimmering with the faint caress...
The water was clear. Crystal clear, not so unlike the crystal ball the gypsy read my fate from. I just so wanted to jump in the water. To breathe. To drink. To laugh. To swim.
Ryan begged me not to jump, but I didn't listen...I couldn't. He controlled so much of my life. I wanted to get away. And yet, I loved him still. The clear water was enticing. And brought feelings of hope to my heart.
"Please, Ry, please," I begged. He came towards me and I pressed my lips to the lower corner of his. I felt his...