The birds had not come in last night and now they would be lost.
Common birds! She spat twirling a small gold spoon in her coffee clattering nervously on the edge of the doll like cup.
So long years of sorrow, so long back breaking toil. The training, the binding of tiny claws the midnight dropper feedings. All of it for nothing. Now they would peck at trash and pretend to get excited when they heard the fog horns of a garbage trawl.
Why do I bother? She picked a tiny scar at the corner of her mouth and drank...
I have come to dread the raven's caw that signals moonrise. It is the dread noise that warns me of worse to come, when I can feel the change come upon me. I beg this of the sun, do not set, do not leave me. Leave me alone with myself and the thing that I carry within me.
This is my anti-aubaude. Leave me with the rest of humanity, walking on two feet. Leave me to tools, to society, to love and all the rest that makes us man. Keep me from hunger, keep me from rage, keep me from...
The cold bit at her toes. Pulling them to her body, she peered over the top of her blanket. The world was beginning to come alive. People hurried on there way to work, lights flickering on across the pale grey skies.
It was an odd time of day; it brought with it relief and pain. She was glad of the sound, the sights of other people. The nights grew monotonous, full of nothing. Every minute seemed like hours, every hour like days as nothing but black emptiness stretched out before her. As day broke, cutting through the darkness, she often...
I'm lost.
The corn fields turned into and endless turning of green upon green, and I couldn't run because the leaves had become blades.
I've stopped walking. I've stopped screaming. Screaming only made me thirsty, and I even tried tearing a corn leaf to pieces to suck on something, anything. I tried to pull an ear and when I pulled the leaves back, a handful of black ear wigs fell onto my lap, pincher butts spread wide. I wiped them off and ran.
Something cut my upper arm.
I lay now, staring at the sky, it's gone from gray to...
I looked at the passport, and then back up at the woman standing in front of me.
"Are you serious?" I asked, a puzzled look on my face.
She looked sad.
"What is to be funny?" she said, her broken English somehow endearing.
"I don't know how they do things in..." I turned her passport over, and looked at the country name listed. It took up three lines, and many of the letters just looked like squiggles to me. "...your home country, but over here we do things differently."
"Is me!" she smiled, and I felt my tough exterior melting...
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.
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...
Heather had never found her talent.
The smallest amount of knitting made her arms feel like they'd fall from her shoulders. Her paintings looked like they'd been crafted by a toddler. Even decoupage, just gluing paper onto things to decorate them, seemed beyond her reach; in every project the images were wrinkled and unattractive. What was she doing wrong? Time and time again she struggled to release her creative genius, the one she had been told lived inside each and every person, but evidently she preferred to stay hidden deep inside.
Standing on the bridge, she watched the churning waters...
I was all wrong. This wasn't the spot I thought we buried her. Jason was in front of me pointing left, and the sky was darkening. My mind was all over the fucking place. He's pointing left, when I swear we buried her right by this patch of weird leaves that looked like lettuce. Still, Jason swore that we needed to head left more. Really, when you commit such a crime, and forget where you buried the body, needing to go back to get it because you "accidentally" left the weapon right by the body, possibly with your prints... going...
The words hovered beneath my glowing finger, power incarnate. I lifted the text, spinning it lazily in the air, before hurling the curse at the image of my nemesis.
The photo I had ripped from the backcover of her book dissolved, dripping onto the table, her face hideously deformed, the black ink staining the tablecloth beneath.
"She thinks she can write horror," I said, the deathly silence of the basement swallowing my words. "She doesn't know what horror is." I smiled. "Yet."