The ghosts of her past continued to haunt her.
The parents she'd disappointed, the boy she'd left behind, even the teacher who had taken her under her wing in the hopes of helping her realize her full potential. She saw them all before her as clearly as the last time she'd seen them. Their frowns, knitted brows, and downcast eyes. She hated those expressions, the disillusionment of their ideals written across them like ink on paper.
How could any of them have known her true potential? And if they had, would they have been heartened or horrified? Knowing ignorance was...
I liked Erica, but Daddy didn't. She did everything for him, like the man on the advert said she would, and it had meant I wouldn't have to anymore.
She had mousy hair and it fell around her pale face in curls. She always smiled at me with her pretty eyes and high cheek bones, and at Daddy. Though he would never smile back.
Erica was always sweet and loving and kind, just like Mummy had been.
I still feel sad when I think of Mummy sometimes. Especially when I happened to brush Erica's skin. It was cold. Not like...
she tracked him to the cafe. it wasn't right that her past was in his mind, and not her own. she watched his every move. when he sat down, she entered. she sat across from him, acting as if this was perfectly normal. "I need to aquire the information you're carrying. that information doesn't belong in your hands, anyhow." she said. "I don't know what you're talking about." he said simply, taking a sip of the dark liquid swirling in his glass. "I'm talking about my past. my parents, the journal, the apprentice, everything." she said, softer with every word....
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...
"Listen," I whisper. "Hear the waves crash."
She listens, head cocked to one side. Her beautiful golden hair cascades down her face, a blonde waterfall.
"They're telling you stories," I tell her. "And you can hear them, if you listen."
You can almost hear her, the force it takes for her air-filled brain to concentrate, and listen. Now, she is perfectly poised, on the edge of the cliff. The waves break below her, screaming in her ear. It only takes a slight shove, and she topples off the edge. Even in death she is picture-perfect. For a few moments she...
We wrote a song for the silver trees. The streetlamps gathered underneath the bridge to hear us. Our band played. Others milled. The night was soft. The river was a metronome.
We wrote a song for the silver trees.
Sylvia wasn't sure she should have been there, never higher than 3rd chair in the symphony, but the viola was for her and her alone. I loved it when she tilted her neck just so. The chains glinting silver in the groaning of the streetlamps.
This was a song for her neck.
We wrote it in a hurry, gathering musicians out...
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...
I waited for her, all night long I stood there waiting. As the crowd dissipated, I was left erect and waiting. I make a promise and I would not break it. I stood until the last form had left the room and I remained. I now wonder if I had left, would she have came? Was it pure expectations that had pushed her to break a promise? Was it the anxiety that came with battle.. in the end was it my fault? For standing up when no one else would, when keeping a promise that was broken before spoken and...
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...
"But do you love me?"
Love? What is love? Love is a social construct. Love is an excuse to screw someone you think is hot. Love is a joke, a trap, an illusion. Love is what you wish for when you don't know how the world really works.
I see your skin and I think of you naked, wish for you to fall into my arms so I can possess you. Part of me wants you now, part of me wants you always.
There's only a limited extent to which these parts overlap.
Lust after you, to be sure. Like...