"This is it?" Leila said with a wrinkled nose, her hands were clasped behind her back as she slowly approached the animal.
Myron stared at the blue ribbon sitting in a bow on the back of her head, eclipsing her dark brown tresses like an enormous butterfly. His eyes traveled down to her feet and the way her calves flexed as she walked on her toes around the creature.
"I wasn't lying, was I?"
"Dunno," Leila replied, and she hopped on a crate, her lanky, boyish form backlit by golden rays. It shone through her hair, making it more like...
- I opened my eyes to see where I was.
- I could only see black.
- Everywhere I turned, I would see nothing.
- I shook my head to see if it would dissapear.
- I began to see little bits each time I shook my head.
- I saw glass bang smack in front of me, But for some reason I was so frustrated so I punched a whole through the glass.
- That is when I saw things that I did not know before...
- My mum she died at the age of 36, she gave birth...
"Rush! Hurry! We must get off the street before anyone realizes we've left. "
"Mummy, why?"
"Because I said so."
"Because he's bleeding, Mum? Is that why?" I grasped the edge of her suitcase, let it carry me along, my feet nearly leaving the ground. Breathless, visions of things much different from sugar plums. Blood. Screams, a distant siren, the smell of cordite. Done. Rush! Move! NOW! Hungry, what, no time. Leave the cat.
Down the stairs, falling, falling, falling out onto the cobblestones. Scent of mum's sweat mixed with tobacco, and the stench of death. Train sounds. Off to...
Phons and Ramon had worked this beat for awhile, all of Phons' three years on the force. Today was as beautiful as the tourists bobbing around the stores. The two strolled the sidewalk enjoying their usual eye-candy.
Ramon spots a nice blonde, and turns to point it out to Phons, but he's looking at something in the sky. Glancing back to the blonde he notices she too is looking up. He glances up and immediately gets a face-full of glare, quickly wrenching away and furiously blinking. He smacks Phons on the belly for a moment, "Hey..."
Phons doesn't budge. Ramon...
Sitting at a desk with pen in hand. "It's us against the world." "Watch out, America."
The circle of faces tightens. The air seems heavy. No one breathes. This could be the start of a new world era. One wrong word and it could be the end of this one, and it is impossible to say which outcome is worse.
Moonlight drips in through the window. "Just start it," someone whispers. A hand reaches in and drops the precious sheets of paper on the desk. Only two. One chance to mess up, and that's only if the writing is small...
Mary Ruth had been alive for one hundred and two years, and she knew things she shouldn’t know. She knew where the fairy rings of mushrooms sprouted in the woods. She knew that twenty years ago, Mr. Wilkins the shopkeep had been operating a still on his land. She knew why Ms. Perry, the beautiful young war widow, had died at the bottom of a cliff, and why that handsome new Reverend Taylor had run off.
She also knew how to keep her mouth shut. She knew the value of silence, and the value of listening. And sometime in her...
Kandace made me kneel, which was hard to do since my hands were tied behind my back, and jerked the burlap sack off my head. I'm sure she took a few strands of my hair with it. I was kneeling in front of a small wooden table, upon which sat three tea light candles, their tiny flames stood perfectly still. The room beyond was pitch black. The scent of melting wax thickened the air I was trying to breathe. Kandace doesn't know I have asthma. She has stuck a piece of duct tape across my mouth, keeping my complaints muffled....
I don't know, I just feel like I'm not really here at the moment. My mind is always somewhere else. I don't know where though, for you see I have actually lost my mind.
I feel like I'm split into four people. The solid me? She's just not present right now, I don't know where she is. Like I said, I lost her. I didn't mean to though...
I promise.
The saddest thing about losing me, is that nothing ever feels 'right' anymore. You know what I mean! That gut feeling you get when you make decisions or when you...
On the fourth day of the invasion, the defenders opened the gates of the zoo. Let those bastards contend with lions stalking them, rhinos charging at the sound of gunfire. Make them fight in a storybook, where hawks might dive down on them, and elephants would trumpet victory for the city.
That was the idea certainly. But these were zoo animals, most born in the zoo far from any jungle, and the rest had not stalked since they were young and foolish. They yawned in the heat of the day and wondered when the man with the feed would come....
The sword hilt slipped from his hand as he staggered back. Leather-palmed gauntlets slick with blood, his own and that of dozens of men, could yet have gripped, had his hands the strength for it.
In the steaming corpse at his feet, the blade angled outward, once shining and ceremonial, now chipped and ruined by the armor and bone it had overcome. It had belonged to his father, to his grandfather, and to a king before that; when this was over, he thought, it would hang on his wall and never again leave his sight.
This was the last of...