"What's that you say?" the captain growled into his phone, "Pirates, in our neighborhood?"
He called out to his men, "Raise the flag! Ready your weapons! If they want to be pirates, they can prepare for battle."
The men went about their business, but the usual bounce to their steps were gone. Their captain had spent a wee bit too much time watching Peter Pan as a lad, and they were paying for it
.
"What weapons would you have us use, cap?" asked one soldier.
"We have no cannons and no plank, are you crazy?" muttered another soldier.
The...
No shoes or socks in the snow, JaKK was only focused on finding the settlement. Escaping was the easy part, finding his family might be hard. Physical discomfort was not part of his programming, his body able to withstand any extremes of temperature.
The scientists had made them. Fed them. Studied them. Experimented on them. Killed them. Few were left.
After two days he was still beside the forest, the neverending trees.
He might be alone. Lost.
But for the first time in his existence.
He was free.
This dream was better than waking. Like many others-- She was there. She looked different in every dream, talked different, had a different name; but she was the same person every time. She was an aspect of me, who I wish I could be, who I knew I never could be.
Except in the dream. While I was still the awkward, shy man I always was, in my dream I could share dinner with a woman who had all the qualities I wanted. She could talk without feeling nervous. She was ambitious, no regrets of /not/ doing something. And, of...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room.
Well, "standing" may be the wrong word. There's someone IN the corner of my room. The lights are off; only moonshine streaming through the window above my bed gives shape to the darkness there. It's bulky; that much I know. It's BIG, bigger than me. The size of its shadow dwarfs my small frame, or would anyway, if I dared move from beneath the covers of my linen sheets.
Feet tucked safely in, the monsters under my bed can't get me, but if I move the alien - for surely that's...
There was a stage. A microphone. A guy with a guitar and another at a piano. One spotlight trying to mark out everything up there and missing the edges. And that was it. If the audience in the jazz bar had been expecting anything more, anything grander or, well, jazzier, they were disappointed. Most were. It was a good place to be disappointed in.
It was a good place to spend money when it had nowhere else to be spent too. That’s mostly what these people were doing. Spending money that they didn’t know what else to do with. Spending...
I held it at arm's length. Three feet long from blade to hilt it, the replica Confederate cavalry sword is beautiful. It is etched up and down the length of the blade with scrollwork and in two places with the letters CSA. My heart trembled as I held it loosely, admiring it. I couldn't believe she'd sent me this sword. It is a beautiful birthday present.
The shoes, they won't stop calling out to me. I walk down the road, in the rain, or even in the snow, and these peachy shoes, with the thin straps that wrapped perfectly under my ankles, they keep whispering.
I bought them discounted over on 16th, at that shoe warehouse place (my sister used to call it the shoe whorehouse, because that's what we'd do to get the money to buy in there, well not really, but almost) and I saw them on the shelf one early Saturday. The shop was empty. These shoes, they called out to me. Buy...
Janet said it was good to write to Santa, so that he knows what to bring on Christmas Day. I did do it once before, but Daddy took the letter and later, it was in tiny pieces in the bin. I told him Santa won't know what I want, and he slapped me hard on my face and told me to get him another beer or there wouldn't be any bloody Christmas.
Janet says this Christmas will be different from all of the rest, because Santa always comes to her house and I sleep here now. Janet says I can...
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs; a small boy and his even smaller sister.
"What are we looking at, Jack?"
Jack frowned and shushed his sister, pointing conspiratorially at the darkness between the slats of the steps.
They stayed that way for several minutes, scrunched up tight, necks disappearing into shoulders, rocking forwards on their toes.
"There, Arianna, look!"
He pointed towards a patch of darkness that had begun to twist and swirl in very much the way darkness shouldn't. Two yellow eyes blinked and stared back at them.
A voice like poison treacle spoke into the silence.
"It's...
He was on edge today, I could tell. The whole drive over to the crime scene he was quiet. He is never quiet unless is trying to solve a case in five minutes, his ex-wife is being a pain in his ass or some thing more sinister was on his mind.
We crossed the holographic police line. It recognized our badge numbers and IDs instantly. These things save so much more time than that old, shitty tape we used years ago.
He knew who to talk to, and walked right up to the officer in charge.
"We got this boys,"...