She could feel the terror drenching and cloaking itself around her. Don't be afraid, it whispered. You've known for years, it whispered. But still she did not know what do to.
Her name was Emma Fairfax, and she was dying.
It approached, back bent and hooded cloak hiding its face. It was terrifying and calming all at once, a simple presence in a simple place.
She was afraid.
A single bony finger reached out from under the sleeve and cricked forward, beckoning her towards the form. "Come to me," it whispered.
And she did.
The moon would never be the same again.
NASA, in a fit of proctological madness popped a cap in it's ass. It was no longer the benign pie in the sky of sappy Italian love songs.
The man, the one in the moon, was pissed.
The changes were slow to come. Not many people noticed at first that the tides were stronger and higher. The Bay of Fundy was virtually empty during low tide, and Nova Scotia completely submerged during high before anybody thought to ask what was up.
Lunacy was on the rise.
Werewolf sightings peaked.
Lunar eclipses now...
The audience stared open mouthed at me. The excitement of their shock rippled and fizzed through me as I beamed at them, arms spread wide.
I'd been acting in the same play for what felt like aeons and it had begun to wear on me. Each line felt like a chore and I had said so to a friend of mine over coffee.
"Do something new, then!" he'd said, "Do something exciting!"
I'd pondered this suggestion as I dragged myself into my costume. The most wondeful idea hit me and acted my part better than I ever had before, buzzing...
My name is Sal. I work in a box factory in Manhattan. When I first got here, this city seemed sane to me. Now -- I'm not so sure.
A woman walked into my office the other day wanting records of her company's invoices. She was stunning. I offered her coffee while she waited for me to look up the records, and we really hit it off.
Her name was Darla. I asked her to dinner that night and, much to my delight, she accepted.
We met at a cozy little Italian place for wine and pasta. Things went...
Green.
Not particularly cosy and warm during dinner when all are bundled up on the sofas watching tv with the woes of work peering through the keyhole of the door tightly shut.
Nor tranquil and soothing in the morning as you slump through the pale blue bathroom with your body and mind working aggressively against the inevitable routine that will discharge all the energy you gained during last night's rest.
It conveys less about passion and adventure for love and life than the vivid red that somehow decided to reside the kitchen walls to remind everyone that your life mostly...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up. "Everybody take a good long look at these" she exclaimed.
Jeff turned around to see Samantha holding a rat in each hand. She was smiling for some reason. And then it happened. The rats smelled a rat. That's exactly why Samantha had brought them. She knew if anyone could sniff out the rat that was most definitely sitting somewhere in the class, it would be another rat. (To catch you up, someone told the teacher that Samantha was cheating off of...
Goodnight…
The cracks of light from the dusty attic had faded. Even through the lid of this chest, it seemed obvious that evening had fallen. Why had the young master not returned? Why was I so thirsty?
I'd not wanted to play the young master's silly game of Hide and Seek. He'd insisted. Just after his gentry friends had laughed at him, when they'd spotted the way he looked distractedly at me cleaning the grate. His high and mighty friends had laughed and joked the way the Butcher's apprentices did at market day.
The young master seemed upset and shot...
They were listening.
He knew, and he didn't care. It didn't matter. Nothing would matter, after all, after this.
He kept moving forward. Sometimes it felt inevitable. Sometimes it felt like it wasn't his feet propelling him, but something else, a force of nature, a gravity holding his life in balance. He kept going. It didn't matter what kept him going, after all. Nothing would matter after this.
They were watching.
He could feel their eyes even as he moved, boring giant holes into his skin, mining his body for- for what, he didn't know. Their eyes had been a...
The lead ninja laughs. "You are a fool, Senzi," he says through his mask. "Never make a boast that you cannot back up with action!"
They have me surrounded, five on each side, and one nimbly crouching on the tracks behind me, ready to leap away once the train came too close. I had no such route to safety; the points of their katanas promised a quick death should I stray from the rails.
All I have is my own katana, and my pride.
The ninjas continue to mock and jeer. I will be dead in seconds, they think. I...
Kelsey was afraid to go out at night. Afraid of big, bad Bromley. When she told people she met online that she left in Kent, they always said she was lucky to live in such a nice, leafy Home County, nestled away in the undergarments of England's green and pleasant land.
But Kent had a dark, nasty side. That side was called Bromley. Yet another drive-by? Really? People didn't associate Kent with gun crime, or compare it to the LA ghettos, but Kelsey did.
Her friend Marie had also had enough of it. But Marie wasn't so scared.
"Kelsey, let's...