The dream had been wonderful, yet it would never be real: she knows, even as she wakes, in the taste of bitter almonds at the back of her throat.
She tries to still herself completely so she can relive it in the morning haze. There was a boy-- no, a man-- and he had called her somewhere, taken her somewhere--
She breathes. In, out. In, out. Maybe there's something in dreamcatchers after all.
There had been a man in the dream. That is certain. There had been a man in the dream, and he had--
The fan drones incessantly. She...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
"Malcolm, what are you doing?" The teacher frowned slightly.
"They're not freaks," she said, quiet but emphatic. "And they're not faking for attention. It's not a disorder, and it's not an illness. It's just a way of being."
The words had been running through her head for the past twenty minutes as the teacher had started talking about gender identity disorder, in which people didn't identify with the biological sex that they were born into.
"I'm sorry, Malcolm, but it's in...
It approached. The first day of writing a 6 minute story. "Excuse me? A story about a story? That's so meta", I whispered to myself. The truth is, the story is really about life, and life is both the story and the story teller.
Four minutes. Really, it took two just to write that paragraph? "It's been so long since I've written creatively", I thought to myself. It's true. It's been years. Nowadays, most of my words are shaped in the form of technical documents, twitter updates, and code.
Three minutes. Time is ticking down. I look to my right,...
The dream was better than waking. I floated, all the past troubles seeming to dissipate before my very eyes. Luke was nowhere to be seen, which was a relief, because in days past he had haunted my dreams mercilessly. I noticed that there was no one else in my dream, just a thick, white mist. Like a feather bed, i laid in the unusally substantial mist, in a mystical dreamlike state. I saw a shape, a dark figure coming through the fog. It was Nyxie, my facility director. Her red hair floated like me, but she kept to the ground....
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She leaned on the door frame, getting support from the wood that she no longer got from her feat. The binding had just begun and already she has trouble balancing herself.
Her mother told her that this was tradition. That to go before the matchmaker she needed to be beautiful. To achieve the perfection of beauty she needed to sway in the wind like the willow tree.
The girl had no desire to sway in the wind, she wanted to be the wind. To go where...
Within sight.
A new future within sight. Fresh hope, fresh starts.
Leaving behind everything we know and everything we hold true and dear, taking a chance on this foreign alien land because we have to. Because we have no othe choice and no other hope.
Who decides rights? Who decides the boy gets an education and the girl gets survival? Without the girl there would be no Decider.
Why does she take the front seat? Why must they lounge inter luxuries of lands which are not theirs?
A family exists elsewhere. Speaking another tongue and wearing a different skin does...
How do you tell a child that it's over? How do you explain in short, fleeting moments that they have reached the end?
I was always so proud of this child. I hadn't known her for long, but when we found her, she was like a celestial reminder that good remained in the world and that we always have something to fight for. She brought us a reminder of innocence in our darkest and most twisted days, and for that I will forever be thankful.
I had loved watching her grow up. She would tell me tales of imaginary people...
I watched as the creature - the whatever it was - floated on the soft breeze towards me. It had wings, but it didn't seem to want to use them, gliding through the air instead. As it got closer, my nerves started to act up.
I hate insects.
I hate anything with more than four legs and I'm not that keen on anything with more than two, if I'm honest about things.
I felt cheated as I watched it. The first sunny day in weeks, and I had a chance to enjoy it, sitting in the garden with a book...
Once there was a beautiful kingdom with a wise ruler, a red wolf demon. He was cunning and strong, and loved long. During an especially daunting hunt, chasing a herd of water buffalo, he was joined by a pack of ordinary wolves, gray and black and brown. They all enjoyed the feast that hunting together had brought them, and in the celebrations, he met the most beautiful she-wolf he had ever laid eyes on. Her fur was gray, with that glossy sort of sheen you only see in the mornings of the reddest of sunrises, a color that rivaled his...
"Of all the times my back has to go out, it decides to do it with a freaking hurricane coming," Susan fumed. "I haven't even had time to board up the windows or glue down the silverware."
The dark storm clouds crept closer and closer and closer to her home.
"Why is that godforsaken mailbox so far from the house?" she cried, needing to focus her frustration at being completely helpless on something, on anything.
Susan tried to stretch out her back, tried to stand up, but the pain snapped at her lower back lips whips. She cried out, hoping...