My name is Joseph Buxton and I am a terrible person.
The audience stared open-mouthed at me as the blood welled around the wound and covered my hands which were clasped over. I wouldn't normally do this, try to save a man's life, but I felt I owed him something. As he bled out and stained the cuffs of my shirt, the useless audience just stared on unmoved.
I felt his heart slow to a stop and watched the life drain from his eyes. He was still now, it was over.
I rolled up my sleeves and flagged down a...
Travel light, but take everything with you. That motto had served Herschel well all these years and he wasn't about to abandon it now.
He stepped over the fresh corpse. Putting down the gun, its barrel still hot and smoking, he went into the bathroom for his toothbrush, grabbed the bills from his roommate's rapidly cooling hands, and walked out the door.
I came down the stairs after I heard the rumbling in the streets. Something shook my potted plant, the one my grandmother gave me before she died. It shook so hard, it fell to the ground.
Earthquakes don't happen in Chicago, and my third floor one-bedroom was luckily sturdy enough to withstand whatever caused all this motion.
The rumble happened again. This time more prominent feel. The earth began to split farther up the street. Cars rocked on their shocks.
I knew what this was, and I knew it was here for me. The shaking continued, the sky darkened. He...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She had just made it home. It was 11:58 p.m. The night would end in a couple of minutes, and with it, her glittering ruby gown, the silken slippers, and the jade hairpins keeping her silken locks in its elaborate up-do. But for now, she would savor the evening she'd just had: eating the most sumptuous food she'd ever had, mingling with the guests she'd once called neighbors, and most of all, dancing in the yellow throne room with the prince's half-brother.
the pumpkin
The girls rejoiced. It took them an hour, but they finally found the Moleskine notebook that Julia had so carelessly misplaced. Anna and Rachel spotted it beneath a rock that Julia used to keep the pages opened flat.
Now that the hunt was over, the three girls placed the notebook on the ground and stood around it. They took hold of each other, and began the chant. As they chanted, they began dancing around the notebook, faster and faster, chanting more and more loudly.
A beam of pure white light shot straight into the air and appeared to pierce the...
The conversation lasted two words: "Never again." They said it at the same time as they exited the restaurant. Why had the waiter insisted on swaying them away from the salmon and toward the tough lamb? Was it deliberate? Did he know this was a make-it-or-break-it meal and was itching to break something, anything? Did he glean from their terse looks that something dire was already on their horizon, and while the kids were asleep, the exorbitant sitter keeping watch, they were out to rehash the missteps that had brought them here? Had the waiter's ex-wife just taken him for...
It was the fifth night in cell 16, my reflection staring back at me. The lights had gone out on the evening of the second day, leaving me and the rest of the people here shrouded in darkness after 4pm. No one has come to check on us since then, and the food they left me ran out yesterday morning. There were sirens outside, but they stopped yesterday too. I don't know what's going on, or if I'll even find a way out of here, but I hope the family is okay. Jesse always was the dumb one, getting into...
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...
"I'm with stupid." It was the dumbest t-shirt he'd ever owned. He liked it anyway, but she gave it away. Someone at the homeless shelter would receive an "I'm with stupid" t-shirt this Wednesday at giving time. God he missed her, even though she gave away that t-shirt. He missed the way her face lit up looking at every snowflake that fell in the winter.
He missed her light brown hair sitting upon her bare shoulders in summer; the way she she would groan at him for wearing the "I'm with stupid" t-shirt. She used to dance to "Video Killed...
I shivered. The moor was cold and damp on this February morning. The fog was thick and clung to my hair, my face, my clothes. I wiped my dewy glasses and stretched my aching limbs. I'd been hiding behind this tree for far too long.
I heard a crack.
I eased myself up, cursing my poor old back all the while, and raised my weapon of choice. I lined up my 'scope, taking a deep breath and smiling with satisfaction as the proud head came into focus.
Old Braveheart I called him. I knew it was a cliche but since...