100 feet away. That's where I was when the car crashed through our fence. I was watering the yard, and I thought I was watching the kids, but I had my back to them. We live on the highway. Four acres stretch out behind us. Plenty of space, I figured. But the last owner built right up against the road, the better to show off the building. I wasn't looking. I wasn't thinking. There was Bill, eight years old, all skin and bone and muscle, and he's teaching six year-old Jenny how to toss a football, only she can't quite...
"I has a bus! I iz in it!"--written in black sharpie on the pink paper. The torn end of it soft and frayed, the grocery list on the back now outraged with the bleedthrough of the ink.
"Wait, shouldn't it be like, E-E-N E-E-T?" Linda said, her glasses dangling just off her bottom lip.
"Wait, what?" Sarah replied, she stared hard at the pink paper, not wanting to look at Linda or her stupid retro horn rim super thick shiny blue metallic glasses hanging from her lips. She knew Linda thought that looked cute but it just looked gross and...
100 feet away--it completely wrecks you.
I never loved you. I always didn't like you. Sometimes, I really feel bad for you. Usually you just pissed me off.
I've never met anyone with the need you have to stand so close to things. I got in trouble because I bruised your arm when I pulled you back from the campfire and you screamed as you looked at your burned widdle nose in the mirror. I didn't even feel bad when your lost the tips of three of your fingers when you stuck your hand into the tiger cage. (I didn't...
Ridiculous.
No, it is, it is actually ridiculous.
I haven't thought about him in months, haven't thought about him like that in years (...well, other than the odd hiccup, but I'm only human)
It is his birthday today. I don't even know how old he is.
I don't know if I care. I don't know if I should care.
I loved him - thought I loved him (did I ever anything-else him?) - for years. Lived with him for years. Wanted him, desperately, for years.
He never wanted me.
Loving someone who doesn't love you - never will - is...
"I'm in love with a robot."
"No, you aren't."
"I am. I'm in love with a robot. Honestly."
"That isn't love, and that definitely doesn't count as a robot. It's..."
"I'm not talking about that." She flushed. "You are disgusting sometimes."
I was fairly certain I was disgusting most of the time. Possibly all the time. "So, what is this, in love with a robot? What robot is it? Can you get upgrades, software patches, apps?"
She shook her head. "It's a character. Well. An avatar."
"Oh, this just gets better and better. Is there a real person behind it,...
She'd have preferred the electric chair, at least that one bloody moved. She could get up a good speed on that one, maybe she could get out of it, escape their sympathetic looks. It was bad enough losing the power in your legs without their condescending looks. Idiots.
Apparently it was a "power chair", but, frankly, bollocks to that. Jokingt that she was living out a death sentence was one of her few pleasures left - that terror in their eyes, the "oh god how do we respond to that" was what she was living for right now.
Actually, that...
100 feet away, all hell was breaking loose. Everything was going to change, forever - but for now, I was willfully ignorant. I chose not to look through the windows, not to know, to keep the door closed, locked.
Real life was not going to invade my sanctury.
It had been my prison, up until the moment when I had heard that damned siren, the one that we had all prayed would never go off. The one that promised that it was all too late, that everything had gone wrong, that it was too much.
That sacrifices must be made,...
The wagon was now about 100 feet away. I was rooted to the spot with fear. Perspiration ran down my face and my heart was pounding in my head, I was shaking and powerless to move.
I looked at my son who was stood just a few yards away, His face full of fatigue and fear. I thought I could hear his thoughts..."this is hopeless," we can't do a thing and there is no hope.
If only someone could come and help I thought and screamed it inside a hundred times.
I don't remember the trip to the hospital.But, I...
Private Morlane glanced at the watch that he'd taken off and left on the small table by his cot, rubbing his sleep-weary eyes as he noticed what time it was. Fifteen minutes until dawn, or at least until when dawn was slated to be, according to all of the records that he had read over the last few mornings.
The last few mornings had been early ones. They were camped next to a large farm, with a broken-down wooden fence surrounding the grounds, where a large rooster loved to perch at sunrise and crow so loudly that every living thing...
She wasn't sure she could do this. the bishop had been her friend for a while. he was trying to kill daddy, though, so the princess pulled out her kit and pulled out the vial she hadn't touched since she'd found it. the deadly poison was slipped into her sleeve as she went down to dinner. She sat down next to the bishop, smiling. she moved her arm ever so slightly during the entrees, knocking his hat to the floor. "Oh! You seem to have dropped your hat! Here, let me move your glass so you can get it." she...