She wasn't the kind of girl who kept love letters, wrapped in pink ribbon, locked in an inlayed wooden box. Not that anyone sent love letters these days.
She would have no wild stories of her youth to tell her neices, no lost loves, no ones who got away.
She was, as she always had been, just her.
She had got so use to being on her own, the proverbial independant woman, that she ended up so afraid, afraid of being any other way.
And so , even though she was still young, she had stopped looking for love letters...
The woman watched Martin run into the snow. She could see him for couple of meters, but the lost him in the snow. Through the binoculars she watched the shed. If he ran away, she would be dead. She knew this was risky, but getting that teleporter was more important than surviving in this camp. She could hear her own heartbeat, when she saw Martin, running up to the shed, opening the door and going inside. She let out a sigh of relief, but became all the more nervous. He can't use it now, he has to take her with...
The summer was new, the grass was having that wet green quality when it is the first time in a long while the sun have reached it. It is happiness distilled.
They where moving in together, this was the first spring of the rest of their life. It was their love that made them set the mirror down on the grass and frolic in the spring.
Lifes sadness had not yet reached them, they did not know that this spring of love would turn into a winter of despair as they would argue the content of their lifes but somehow...
Face down on the cold floor of the cathedral, Brother Fidelis whispered his prayers. Though his lips brushed the dust and filth of the stones, his eyes were angled forward, watching the door. Though he lay in front of the altar, he faced away from it.
The flat light of dawn was pushing through the open spaces where the stained glass had been, the thin, watery edge of light creeping slowly across the burned and broken pews. There were no noises yet. The day was not far enough advanced to bring them home. When the clear light rose above the...
The mannequin stared at me again, just like it did every morning.
It was the same this morning as every morning. My route would pass in front of the shop; the same steely look from that dummy. I didn't want to admit it to my older sister, but there was something about that look that made me completely afraid. "Come on, you!" she said. "Stop your dawdling, we're going to be late again, and every time we're late, it's all your fault. Come on!"
I glanced over my shoulder at the mannequin once more. I was sure, this time. Something...
The anti-grav boots were worth every penny.
Shelly had saved for weeks, mowing lawns, delivering papers, collecting coins from every cushion in the house, to earn enough hard cash to buy them. Her mother had told her not to waste her money, that they were probably just galoshes with springs on the bottom, but the girl refused to be deterred. The magazine ad had proclaimed them anti-grav, and there was a Truth in Advertising law on the books, so they must be the real deal.
And she was right.
But not in the way she thought she would be.
Instead...
He set the plate before her. She was petrified, the bugs an creepy crawlies moving around on her plate didn't help. She hadn't seen her family since he had taken her, 3 years ago, and every day since then she was abused, punched and everything in between. He had been obsessed with her since they'd met 6 years ago and it took him 3 years until he finally had her all to himself. She had tried to escape so many times but she was never successful. She knew her time was up soon but she wasn't sure when, she had...
Gradually, that was how the world where it was okay to be a geek, a fangirl, a dork, herself, came into being.
It started with an acquaintance who knew the animated series who became a best friend.
It grew with a sister who accepted everything and opened her eyes to new worlds.
But it finally became real to her when she met him, the boy who pushed her fringe out of her eyes and led her onto the dance floor when she was sad. Who had moved closer in the fog and who had taken her hand without asking. The...
When I was 12, I went to sea. It was a hard life, scurrying around on the ship, hiding from the sailors. I was a stowaway, you see. I wanted to see what it was like. My dad was the ship's cook. He knew I was on board. He was risking everything by not reporting me.
We used to play hide and seek, late at night. My favourite spot was in the engine room, on top of the engine itself. It was bloody dangerous up there. I won every time I went there, because my dad never wanted to climb...
the fog sat heavy
in the valley cauldron.
each intersecting limb
was the peace of a friday
morning, interrupted.
we were singing
all the songs we had heard
before as children, and we
thought of having coffee,
but we didn't.
what does it mean
to be caught under a tree
at the break of what would be
a taciturn day, but wasn't?