The children were not at school. They had better, bolder, brighter things to be doing. The teachers didn't notice. They never did.
They ran out while at break, amidst the confusion of supposed bruises and teases and stolen lunches. The gates were easy enough to get past. Each girl's hair was neatly done up with a hairpin, after all.
The sky was bluer once they got out, it seemed. So they ran, ran hard, ran free, ran wild. They quickly enough leaped through the confines of urbanity and into spaces never explored before, wild forests filled with strange creatures. Each...

You can count me out, I said. I am not doing it. No. I left this years ago. I have a life now, I told them. No more of this stuff for me- I'm out now.
Of course, they pleaded. They always do. But I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders in movements perfected over the years. Please, please, please! We'll give you anything you want.
Never any creativity, really. It was all the same thing. They were small. They wanted to be big. How did their little prods affect me? They were merely molehills aspiring to be mountains,...

Deluxe. Platinum. Gold. That is the key to success, she said to the audience, wine glass in hand. Everyone broke our clapping. She smiled, made a short, stunted half-bow and left the stage. She passed through the crowd with elegance and with purpose, deftly sidestepping those stumbling drunkenly about and avoiding any pitfalls into small talk and conversation. They smiled as she passed, vaguely recognizing her, but not exactly sure what her name was. Passing by a waiter, uniform and immaculate amidst it all, she left her wine glass on his tray. It was only a pleasantry, after all. It...

I stare at the row of perfect houses resting on the perfectly manicured lawns beneath a perfectly blue sky by perfectly green trees. I am surrounded by perfection, but I have not been given it.
Sometimes I wonder why I'm doing this.
I bend down to the ground. There is a ball lying there, perfectly out of place. I pick it up. My son could've played with this ball. He would have been good at sports, I'm certain. Slowly I curl my fingers around it, and feel the perfectly creased leather, shiny with memories of sunny afternoons and perfect throws...

The results were in, she said. And he ran and ran and ran and ran, disregarding the shouts of teachers behind him, just running and running and running till he reached the office. It was up on the bulletin board, sandwiched between changes in the lunch menu and posters for bake sales. He stopped for a moment, breathless, eager. Slowly he let himself look at it. The names were up. He scanned through them: Joe Malone. Hendrick Smith. Jerry Pandrip. Jonathan Sinker. Hetty Carbuncle.... so many names. He knew most of them: they had been his companions during the test,...

I thought the world had been tilted upside down. It would have been preferable to its actual state. Everything looks nicer upside-down. The castle glittered across the water, upside-down. What was above it was only a reflection, of course.
I looked at myself in the water. My reflection looked at me. No, I looked at my reflection. My reflection was the real me.
Nothing's as we thought it was, I thought, amazed at the simplicity of it all.
I could start again! All my mistakes could vanish in this upside down world... Nothing would be the same, but everything would....

That was the last thing she saw.
It was headed straight for her chest, a glittering blade, and she saw it in slow-motion. After that, however, all she saw was blackness.
The killer straightened up after her last convulsive shudders were over. He wiped the knife almost as an afterthought on his torn jeans. His face betrayed no emotion. He walked away slowly but deliberately from the crime scene, over to a payphone. The street was deserted, the sky, blank. Slipping his hand in his pocket, the killer took out a quarter and placed it in the machine. He dialed...

He was standing on the sidewalk below, jumping up and down. A passer-by might think he was crazy, but she knew better. He always did things with good reason. She smiled at him as she walked by and murmured, "Hi." He looked around like a startled deer caught in a floodlight, but she was gone. She had dissolved into the doorway.
Maybe he's really happy, she thought, as she walked softly up the stairs, careful not to wake the sleeping house. Sometimes, when she was happy, she felt like doing that. And she felt like never, ever, ever stopping. Maybe...

She has to save them. That's her job. That's all her job's ever been. She has to sit on top of them, explode into feathers and squawks when needed, brood for days when they're stolen, make countless vows that she'll do better next time.
She likes her jokes, Mother Hen does.
Easter Bunny can steal them every time. He pleads, too, every time, of the scarcity of eggs on the planet, of how hard it is for an honest bunny to make a living nowadays, of the lack of belief in himself, the fake plastic hunts for things that were...

DAY 1
I saw it passing by. It was only a glimpse, a brief glimpse, one of many taxis that I see every single day. But one thing stood out about it. I can't exactly say what, but I remembered it enough, it had left enough imprint in my mind for me to recognize it the next day. Then, I was on my way to the Tube when it zoomed by me. There was no one in it.
No one at all. The driver's seat was empty. I blinked once, hard, but by the time I opened my eyes, it...