Away.

He'd escaped.

And not in the usual way.

Home from school at 7:30pm, another long day of detention for crimes uncommitted (who ever did anything really deserving detention – and when has detention been worse than the alternative. Questions he wrestled with with his head on his desk) – home long after sunset, he pressed his head against his pillow and cried.

The tears awoke the empathy of the waters in the room. His fishbowl grew stormy. A glass of water shuddered with tsunami. The poster of the ship on the wall erupted in gale and he could feel the lash...

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Tom said my neck tasted of honey. When I told Jasper he laughed hysterically, dropping the crystal glass of champagne onto the thick white carpet. Snorting like a horse, slapping his black Parisian jeans, contorting his face like a fairground mirror image. I didn't think it was so funny but didn't say anything. I laughed too.

One thing that Jasper would never know about me is how lonely and disgusted I feel with myself when I tell him about Tom.

When I walked away from the car, turned back and waved at Tom who had wiped the condensation from the...

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They were trapped for seven days. Susan would have laughed if you told her should would never be trapped that long. She had grown up in Alaska and had only even been trapped indoors for four days when the snow gathered past the roof and the tunnel they had shoveled to the car collapsed.

But here they were, seven days later and still trapped. She sighed and walked around the periphery of the bedroom. When they realized they would be trapped for quite a while, they had assigned everyone with a room, to ensure privacy. Susan thought it was silly...

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What do you make of the man who sells his muse?
It's what she wants.
It's what she asks for.
It's the active creation of a ghost, the planning for something that remains in verse and shadow long after the departure of the flesh.
It's the creation of memory and emotion that will remain fresh for the consumer, but will soon become the thorn for the creator
It's the serving of beloved as buffet.
It's what we need.
And ask for.
What do we make of the girl who sells her desire.
It's how she succeeds.
It's how she fails....

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They gathered in the woods, but that was not enough to save them, as they were mistaken for trees, cut down and shipped to a lumber mill.

One of them was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be made into thick planks; most of the rest were sadly torn apart into sawdust and mulch. But that one continued to live, in great pain, as he was violently sawed and assembled into a large, polished grandfather clock.

They attached to him some cold, foreign bits of metal that moved jarringly. The ticking of the gears against his aching frame was unceasing; day...

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Chaz and Elinor tear-ass through the forest, hands raised ineffectually above heads, sodden shoes slapping on undergrowth, alternately laughing and yelling "Ow. Ow. Ow!"

The hailstorm pelts them from above, chunks of ice the size of large coins, not nickle-and-dimeing today but quartering and Susan B. Anthonying. Chaz gets a Kennedy fiftycent piece to the top of the skull and takes a header, facefirst into the soggy pine needles below.

"I think that one actually trepanned me," he shouts.

"What? Get up!" Elinor hauls him to his feet and they keep running.

The tent, they're sure, is just over this...

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You can count me out. I'm over it. Through with you, done with everything....That's a lie. Count me in, it's about time, right? Six years is long enough to be apart. I've waited for this; you, maybe not. Either way, the date's approaching. Count me out, though, it might be a bad decision. No...count me in, I can't wait to see you. Remember that summer? Remember that WINTER? No, no, I can't see you, count me out. Count me in, count me out, I can't decide one way or the other. No, for sure, count me in, what am I...

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Travel light, but take everything with you. Words that my grandmother used to say in wisdom. And words that I've never take to heart till now. The twister ripped though our neighborhood and everything I owned was taken with it. My Children and wife stand now where our Kitchen was. With a heavy sigh, I remember those words my Grandmother used to say, I truly have all I need standing in the kitchen.

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It was white. That was something that was abnormal about the entire situation. What was not something that one thought of when being beaten.

He wondered if perhaps it was heaven trying to tell him that he was closer than he though. He hoped that it was finally the light at the end of the tunnel, but when the next blow from the stick hit him across the back, he knew he had no such luck.

A small well of blood slowly came up his throat. It almost felt like a terrible hiccup to him. One of those hiccups that...

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Becky hoped Tom saw what she had written before her teacher did.

Mr. Smith was notoriously tidy about the things in his classroom. Desks were wiped down once a day, not by the school janitorial staff but by him personally. In other classes she knew friends who would write on the desks, leaving messages for the students who sat there after them - a sort of school texting service between students without cell phones, but Tom took only this one class after her. Would he see her message? She could pass it off as a doodle and if he said...

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