I stand here alone on the grey, stone foundation of a tiny island. Save a few patches of dark green moss clinging to the rock face, I am the only living thing here.
The waves crash against the rocks, rocks that have withstood their attacks for thousands of years. And then there is me, struggling to keep my footing. As I am battered by wind and ocean spray, I slowly make my way towards the only landmark within sight. A light house. Not an old abandoned one, but a pristine strong one.
It's all there is. A small shelter from...
There was only a sliver of space between the floorboards and the door under the stairs. It wasn't even really a door. To the naked eye, it appeared to only be another wall, another wasted space in the sprawling mansion. They crushed their faces to the hardwood floor, straining to see beyond the door, but they couldn't. It was just to thin.
"Let's pry it open," Jason said, pointing to one of the banister arms. It hung onto the rest of its siblings by a sliver of fragmented wood, conveniently shaped similar to a crowbar. "I'll even do it myself....
With a sharp, breathy hiss, the seal of the airlock broke, and Simon felt the cool Earth air blow across his face.
Well, technically he didn't feel it, but his suit's sensors recorded data on the air; its composition, pressure, and temperature.
It was the first time a human had set foot on the planet in over two centuries. The Consumption had taken total control over the planet in 2077, rendering it uninhabitable. The survivors had fled to Mars and the Jovian colonies just before the air itself had been sucked away to feed the relentless multiplying of the microscopic...
She stumbled blindly through the woods, images of every horror movie she'd ever seen flashing through her mind. Admittedly there were very few of them, but they all seemed to involve people getting lost in the woods and meeting an untimely end. The Blair Witch Project had been the most recent, and she hadn't been able to sleep for weeks after watching it. But this was only a game.
Only a game. She kept repeating the words under her breath, letting them calm her. Only a game. None of this was real. Her best friend, lying motionless on the ground...
They did not know where they arrived, the landscape was strange and different. The last days was mixed up as the food on the lifeboat had been gone for quite a good while when they finally reached this shore.
Maybe they where in the afterlife, he had no idea and neither had Marc that was with him in the lifeboat. Marc was one of the sailors on the ship that he was traveling with, hunting for inspiration to write new rhymes about ancient mariners.
Now in this shipwrecked state he somehow had saved pen and paper. So important for him,...
I'm in love with a robot, but he doesn't know. Yesterday morning when he brought me my coffee, I dropped a less subtle hint, something about pressing each other's buttons. But it didn't register. Or if it did, he is playing hard to get. Why should this one be any different? Maybe it wasn't the best idea to name him Rosie, but that's Hanna-Barbera conditioning for you. The warranty says I'm good until next June, so I suppose I could register the unrequited feelings as a defect in workmanship, but I don't know that it would fly. Rosie in all...
Twist.
Once more and the lid would be open and the witch familiar could return to it's home until it was needed again. Sallie, looked around the kitchen and wondered where the animal was hiding, time was of the essence as she'd already started the slow incantation to transform her pet into an inanimate object.
The cat had disappeared and was not heeding her special call. This was bad news. The townsfolk were already suspicious and girls were dying needlessly, suspected of witchcraft whilst she had managed to keep safe.
The cat had been used for a spell against the...
"This is the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in", Bradley thought. No wife, no kids pecking away at 6am, no job to drudge off to. "I can get up whenever I want."
Living off the street was a lot easier for Bradley than he'd expected it to be. You can make $20/hour simply begging on the subway. When everyone gets out of work it's prime time, everyone's happy to be done with the day so they'll toss you their spare change they made from the day. He remembered how uncomfortable loose change can be in the pocket of a...
The jigsaw box cover was a bit different to normal so Megan decided it could be worth doing. Especially with the caption 'THIS BOX WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE' she wondered what this could mean, no doubt some kind of advertising ploy.
10,000 pieces. It was a hard slog but after her boyfriend ditched her a couple of weeks ago and none of her female friends were interested after she had ignored them when Rob was on the scene, she didn't have much else she fancied doing. Even Facebook seemed too much hassle.
Whilst she was searching and fitting pieces she...
Not everyone knows this, but Kate Beaton is obsessive, the painterly equivalent of a Method actor. To create each new page of "Hark, a vagrant!" she recruits Swiss artists' models to dress in period clothing and pose in front of the Alps. Frozen in position as well as in time, they are required to make only the most ridiculous of faces for her art to take fruition. Eyes are stressed. At least half of the models have held a spot in Guiness for eye-bugging capability.
Once their minds are relaxed after a sufficient period of standing still, they are required...