There's somebody standing in the corner of my room.

I can't tell if he means me harm or not - he's not doing anything. He's just standing there.

I'm not certain if he knows that I'm here. Maybe he isn't certain if he's here.

I can't quite bring myself to approach him; I know I should do, I'm a scientist at heart, I should be testing my experience, the environment. Verifying what I think I'm seeing, what I'm perceiving.

But I'm also a coward at heart; a self-preservationist, a vulnerable young woman. With a strange man in her bedroom.

I...

Read more

The last time she'd seen pink butterflies, she'd burned down the church.

She told them the headphones helped with the hallucinations.

She lied.

Dr. Weber had first suggested the headphones, and he'd told her to compile a playlist and to choose the songs based on certain lyrics and words, and to use those lyrics and words as cues to control the hallucinations. If she couldn't completely erase them now, she could at least learn how to hold them back, get that subconscious moving until the scary ones became mildly disturbing and then from there they would lower in degree until...

Read more

The wall is the place most people choose on their own. You come for a day or a week and it's never to see the sights. The sights are immaterial, and not unexpected. Temples, tea houses with dripping peremera trees hanging soot and sleek flowers over damp pollenated tables. Once thriving book shops and market warrens closed down by the proper authorities. Cab drivers who direct you round about ways and never give useful directions. None of these things are unusual, or particularly memorable. It is instead, the wall itself, that calls to you. The wall is the reason you...

Read more

SNAP! it was now that Klein realised he was done.

15 minutes earlier

there was a group of young boys running around having fun but little did i know that what they planned to do would leave them all scared. There were just at the beach with their family but sneaked away to go and swim in the forbidden ocean. Not this ocean was forbidden as it was full with sharks but they didn't know that. Klein and his friends all jumped in unaware of the dangers that laid ahead.As they were swimming one of the boys noticed 3 fins...

Read more

Here are words that don't quite form a story. I'm typing them because I'm compelled to write for six minutes a day as a creative warm-up. If I don't, I get antsy; my palms sweat, my skin itches, I hallucinate. Ok, that's not entirely true, but I do enjoy this activity, and I find that it really helps me "prime the engine" for a more focused day. I work at a radio station, and my job is to write scripts for those goofy things you hear between songs that identify the station. It helps to have a good cup of...

Read more

654 SYH. She sighed. "What the hell is this?"

"The plate," he said, the self-satisfied smirk on his ignorant face.

"Goddamn it." she said. "Mark, you are the most worthless cop ever. Just WRITE THE NUMBERS DOWN. Don't actually TAKE THE PLATES OFF OF THE CAR. That defeats the WHOLE POINT OF LICENSE PLATES."

His smile slipped a little. "Oh," he said, apologetically.

"I really can't understand how you can be so incompetent," she said. "If you were close enough to the vehicle for long enough to REMOVE THE PLATES, why the hell didn't you make an arrest?"

"Well, I...

Read more

The water was clear. "I cannot be stopped, I shall continue."

The stone was implacable. "I am stone, I have been here for millions of years, not some come by night dribble. And I shall not be moved.

But the water was clear, the water would be moved, eventually. Through ten seasons and ten seasons more, the water made it's argument, and every drip, every gush, every freeze, its argument was stronger, and one season, the water continued, and the stone was nothing more than ten thousand grains of sand, each with its own mind, no longer implacable. The stone...

Read more

I jumped. And immediately regretted it.

The fear stripped me of all the other emotion that had been clouding my judgement. My wife, my children. Their faces all flew through my mind like the frames of a length of film.

"What have I done" I wondered as the air flicked my hair about. Pulling at my clothes as if it wanted to help me and stop my rapidly accelerating decent.

Then there was just disappointment. No sadness, no fear, no anger. Just disappointment. I had always sat on my high horse whenever I heard a story of one committing a...

Read more

He was one alone among many. He'd served with his brothers since 2001, since the day after that fateful horror descended on his country. The man, Mohammed Ahmed, was a devout Muslim, had been reared in the faith his entire life. He was also a second generation American, born and raised in the Great State of Georgia. Others had always looked at him differently, but he considered himself a Georgian. A Southerner. An American.

So, on September 12 Mohammed Ahmed became Pvt. Mohammed Ahmed, United States Army. He served willingly in Afghanistan, and hesitantly in Iraq. But, he served and...

Read more

Dust obscured the dim lighting above. Clutching a paper bag, the girl lurched to the elevator. Old, worn doors opened, and she descended.

Outside the building her suitor waited wearing a tattered tweed jacket and chipped bifocals. In his hand, a pair of freshly cut daffodils.

Read more

Contact


We like you. Say "Hi."