In the morning, he'd wake up, stretch a bit and roll up his things into a small bundle and be on his merry way. There was a gym nearby with public access to the showers, where he'd wash his clothes and hang them to dry on a curtain bar somewhere as he brushed, shaved, showered and took care of his other personal grooming.

After that, he hopped on the back of a trolley and got his exercise for the day walking from the trolley stop on the edge of town to the orchard just a mile down the road. He'd...

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Snitches Die Heroically, the Rest Burn in Hell

October 2002. As the flames ripped apart the body of a five year old girl, burning her skin into a mass of molten cellular plastic, boiling the red and white blood cells that traversed her barely formed veins, charring her fragile, yet to be developed bones, and exterminating the intelligence, wit, and beauty of a child who never had the chance to be; our generation looked on and cheered. While the firefighters rushed to squelch the blaze and douse the embers of dying justice, we arrogantly proclaimed the righteousness of this row-home...

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"I feel boxed in," she said.

"I'm sorry?" he replied, not quite understanding.

"Well, the basic thing is this: the image is quite boring, and the color scheme is obnoxious, a weird, misguided attempt at the painterly surrealism that Richard Linklater's Waking Life first presented in film. Add to that two gigantic butterflies, and the whole thing just falls apart. But despite the silliness of the painting, however, there's really no room for absurdity. Characters can't wave pistols around or smoke cigars or get hit in the forehead with boards. I'm boxed in. I have nowhere to go. It's too...

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I woke up hung over, my head throbbing. It felt like mini-jackhammers were destroying my frontal lobe, something I am sure the Scotch took care of last night.

The room was unfamiliar, but I had seen it plenty of times laid out in some IKEA or Sears catalog. I was on the bed with an Oak, maybe Maple, night-stand next to it. The room smelled, not good or bad, just different from my bedroom. Clothes covered the floor in front of the closet, where I suddenly saw my pants. A desperate roll to my side brought back the mini-jackhammers.

The...

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I was walking to grandma's when I spotted the yellow box with a question mark on it. I liked it so much that I leaned against it and stuck a little red thing in my chest. Unfortunately, the little red thing was poisonous and I died. My eyeballs fell out and my skin ripped open and I bled everywhere. Then my body shrunk so that I looked like a voodoo doll. I am still standing against the yellow box with a question mark on it.

bruno went to Kentucky Fried Chicken to buy mashed potatoes and figs. He only had...

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"I'm falling in love with her."

"Oh, that's nice, that really is." She watched him sit up, get up, finding his clothes. "I'm glad."

"That means that this stops."

She frowned. "What? Why?"

He turned to stare at her. "Why? Because this is cheating as it is, let alone -"

"This is just physical. Let her have the emotional and let me have the physical." She got out of bed, sauntering towards him, smirking when he turned away. "There's no reason to stop."

"I really feel something for her. I don't want to hurt her."

"You aren't hurting her. She'll...

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They gathered in the woods. The darkness entwined itself around everything it touched. Filling every hole, every space it could claim.

It was not the darkness that was so frightening, it was that which hide inside. Using it as a clever camouflage.

Something hid, something stalked and watched and he could feel it. It was looking at him, watching and waiting. Its gaze crawling across his skin like tiny spiders.

He hid within himself not wanting to accept it. He built up the layers to keep the darkness out. He would not fear the thing in the dark. he would...

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The moon would never be the same again.

It was three years ago, and she had just gotten off work. She worked late back then, and she stared up at the black sky and pondered herself.

"Who am I?" she whispered aloud, to nobody in particular.

She realized that over the years, she'd put herself into a box. Everything about her, from her work habits, to her social life, even down to her gender identity, were in effort to be normal.

As she stared at the bright circle that stood out against the sky, she realized that being different from...

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Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. The rain was falling around her and she looked out into the street, wondering when she should make her break for it. Sensing that the rain wouldn't let up for quiet some time, she dashed onto the streets holding her package close to her chest. Her eyes flitted from side to side as she transversed the narrow streets and alleys.

She saw the blue door ahead of her and pumped her legs harder, eager to reach her destination. She threw herself against the door with a...

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She didn't look at him as she gingerly opened the sketchbook he had laid in front of her. Carefully schooling her face into it's most neutral expression, just in case she didn't like what she saw.

She needn't have worried.

For as she opened the book and began to gaze over the imagery, the concepts, the scribbled annotations that sounded like he had been talking to himself as he wrote them, she became lost in the world he was describing.

She could feel him tense next to her. She understood that, by being shown his work it was like she...

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