It was really just a matter of survival. Keep going and keep going and eventually, soon if they were lucky, they would reach a village, a town, a bloody great city with skyscrapers and McDonalds and satellite TV. All right, maybe that was taking things a bit far, pushing their luck to the extreme, but it was a beautiful daydream.

"You all right back there?" called Hitesh loudly, despite his cracked, dry throat, trying to make himself heard over the rushing, roaring river that the canoe was racing along.

Ash nodded, realised Hitesh couldn't see him, and carefully leant forward....

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She'd have preferred the electric chair. Even torture, a little watter-boarding couldn't possibly hurt THAT bad. But this, this was the worst punishment she could ever imagine.

She sat in the church pew, holding the envelope in her hand. Yeah, the cops actually let her keep the bounty from the hit. The only catch was that she had to sit through the funereal.

She watched the man's wife comfort a six year old. She could've sworn she heard the words, "where's daddy?" No matter how hard she tried to convince herself that her mind was playing tricks on her, no...

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The results were in. It was his back, that flimsy thing. And I mean that in more than one sense. His back had been giving him problems since we were married. Our wedding night? At the height of passion he suddenly started screaming in pain, as if marriage had injured him. Before that night, he'd never had issues before. And now it wasn't just his spine, it was his unwillingness to be strong and I would bear the brunt of his weakness. Just like I had when we were newly weds. That night I had gotten out of bed, made...

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"I won't," I said. And she turned and walked away. The generals and lower officers, in turn, followed.

I was alone in that room with the future. I'd only known vanishing past and pounding present. I didn't know what to do with myself. I started by counting my breaths and guessing how many I'd take in a minute. I tried thinking about tomorrow but couldn't. I could only picture a towering wall made of brain matter.

I thought, "Maybe I should've" and stalled again. I closed my eyes and thought about nothing, not knowing I'd sleep soon.

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Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.

Twice, in Singapore, she sat by a fountain.

Three times, in Kuala Lumpur, at three different locations, she waited by Banyan trees.

She was waiting. Always waiting.

She was waiting for me.

She didn't know that I knew that she was waiting for me, but enough money, in the right pockets, can keep me out of trouble. *Has* kept me out of trouble for the past four years. Kept me out of her hands. Out of the hands of the people who wanted to find me....

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When I was twelve, I went to sea with my father. My mother had protested out of worry saying that I was not yet ready for the trials of life at sea, but once she had been persuaded to allow me to go, I went with excitement behind my eyes and the song of the gulls ringing in my ears.
I remember the very first time I set foot on the deck of my father's small sailing ship. I instantly fell in love with it. The clear blue waves, the crisp air, and the reflections in the polished wood...

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blahblah fuck

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Shannon sat up, her eyes wide open. She wasn't sure if she was awake or asleep. She looked around the room (dirty socks, cat puke in one corner, empty Miller cans, a laundry basket filled with clean clothes) and wished it was all unfamiliar. She looked at the man next to her. His back was smooth and tanned. A tiny mole winked at her from his left shoulder blade. She wished he was a stranger.
Shannon lay back down. The pillow was damp with sweat, her sweat. Had she been dreaming or coming out of a fever?
"Where are you...

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He didn't know what to say. No one did. It had never landed on anyone's finger before. The fabled winged bug, unlike any other on this planet, stayed away from all lifeforms. Of course there were stories about what would happen if it actually did touch someone, and he guessed he was about to find out. Would he die? Would untold riches come his way? Would he become the most famous person on Terra 12?

The bug, which felt lighter than a feather in his hand, looked up at him. He couldn't help but wonder what it thought. Or did...

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It wasn’t a specific look, or anything she said exactly. It was the things she didn’t do that gave it away. The way that she didn’t automatically include me in the conversation, the way she didn’t look to me when something funny happened, the way she didn’t move up to get more space but stayed, leg pressed against mine, reminding me that she was there.
All the instincts we’d developed about one another over the many years we had been friends were now kicking into gear and compensating for all the things we couldn’t say, not with all these people...

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