The car stalled. The roads were half washed out and the rain pounded like a blacksmith's hammer on the hood. The storms began a few days ago, but before that it had been a dry summer. After the first downpour, people started smiling and stopped fanning their faces. Life strained under the drops in vegetable and flower gardens.
After the first whole nights of dark heavy clouds, the constant grumble of thunder, people were still trying to be positive. Good for the forests, dry as tinder, they'd say. The river was too low anyway.
After a week and flooded basements,...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
Mrs. Baer had not picked her for the reading group, but that didn't matter, because it didn't mean she wasn't good enough, it just meant that Mrs. Baer didn't KNOW how well she could read! Mom would say it, loud and clear Emily could hear it in her head, "If you'd just made yourself noticed, Emily, then you would not have been ignored!" This is what Mom always told both of her older sisters when they became too meek.
"You get...
It came out of nowhere. A rock. A killer.
It was bigger than anything I'd ever seen since breaking orbit, but that wasn't saying much for a rookie like me. My console alerted me to the spinning asteroid and woke me from the warmest blanket of a dream. Of course, that's how it always happens, right?
I make my way up to the cockpit, though it's only on the other side of the thin partition of my shuttle. The Gen-Mark II was designed to hold four and that's how it was filled when we left dock last year. Now mine...
I climbed the building step by step, not running, only tip-toeing, afraid to be heard. No one knew I was here, and no one will ever know. I will leave no trace.
I reach the roof, opening the door to a world of fresh air and new possibilities. I took one step and imagined what people may have ventured up here.
The newly met couple. The boy and girl hardly know each other, yet trust each other with everything they have. They don't have long, he leaves to go home in two weeks time and she has to go back...
There was originally only one photograph. Now there were two. Well, two halves. Incomplete. Roughly cut down the middle of the bay, neatly bisecting the bench. One was lightly discarded in a pile of "Things to do/sort."
The other was folded and refolded and bent again, then sat in a wallet. Strangely, the one that was thrown aside was the more loved. It showed regret. It showed hope. It showed Faith.
The tattered half showed bitterness, anger, loss. Odd, really as the original showed promise. Anticipation. Love. The man who captured all these strange emotions just thought they were a...
I wasn't sure when I woke up what to do with my day. I mean, I like to be as productive as the next guy, but it was Freeform Friday. i didn't even really know what that meant, but I had it marked on my calendar.
So I decided my best move would be to go back to sleep. When I woke up at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, I realized that time was my villain. I'd slept away the entire day.
So now what? It's still light out, so I could work on some flash fiction.
I do not...
Crap. This wasn't going to be good.
The old man said 'Let's go deer hunting. Just like old times. Reconnect after all those years of you pissing away your life on the other side of the world.'
That was last night. We drank to it. He had some incredible Irish Whiskey. 12 year old. We killed a bottle. I hoped like hell that he'd forget the hunting plans.
He didn't.
Oh, Christ, he didn't.
My brain was tuning timpani drums in my skull. Like O Fortuna was ramping up. There was a fog over the field that may or may...
In the springtime of our country's bicentennial. Two young lovers discovered a large rock, that was weathered in such a way to resemble a table. Underneath this table was a mason jar and in that jar a note was held. This is what it read:
Certainties are immutable, this I know to be true. A firm handshake and jolly pat-on-the-back for a job well done. These over-indulgences of manufactured ardor get old. I was never about love, just understanding. Something that can't be quantified in perceived notions from three hundred years ago.
So I post my stake. I make my...
I had already been running for way too long. Over rocks and streams, around trees, it didn't seem to matter. The maze of the landscape seemed perfectly clear to me as I forced myself through the forest.
The only things I knew for sure were that I had to get away from this thing and that the only advantage I had was my familiarity of the land.
The beast was definitely faster than me. And hungry. Those two things together weren't making things look good at all.
Why did I have to go into its territory and steal food? Why...
He set the bowl before her. Watched her lick up the milk, drops sticking to the whiskers, few stains already down her soft black velvet catsuit.
Bob had never imagined getting into the cat scene until that fateful day outside the store where he'd gone to buy his usual six bars of chocolate, four multibags of potato chips and a crate of beer.
Outside he noticed an attractive young man with long fair hair holding two leads, each one had a beautiful girl at the end, dressed as cats.
Bob dropped his bags of shopping in surprise and never bothered...