I'm not sure what's wrong with the site today, but it doesn't seem to be working for me. When I click for the prompt, the clock doesn't appear. Talk about a pile of rotten potatoes.
"I'm with stupid," she said.
I looked away. It wasn't the first time she'd said something like that about me. I knew that because it wans't the first time she'd said it right in front of me.
So I just looked away. I had a Pepsi can that I jiggled, and sometimes raised to my mouth.
We walked around the arcade, with her twitching her behind, trying to look like she was hot shit.
Why she needed me along to do that, I don't know.
Unless it just made her feel better to have someone to feel better than.
I...
I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead. I knew that this was going to happen. In fact, I knew for three years that today, on my birthday, I was going to die. I didn't really believe it at first but as the day got closer I understood everything.
This whole thing started back three years ago. I had just turned thirteen and I wanted to start earning myself some money. After all, my parents wouldn't pay for everything I wanted anymore. The only job...
She could tell I was faking it. Unforgiveness. Ten years working at the lab, overtimes, ruined marriage, kids that pretend I'm not their dad, ulcers. I hated her for joking around, waving the scalpel, accidentally killing F7, our first subject to live beyond three months.
In human years he this was equivalent to 20. Tall, dark haired, extraordinarily strong. Yes, he was ugly, but this was of no consequence. We had all grown to love him. .
Sonia, my assistant ran out the room instead of trying to save his life. Couldn't look at me. Knew I would never stop...
Goodnight...read the glowing sign above my bedroom door.
I shoveled myself further under the covers and sat with my flashlight, curled in my tiny igloo, my fortress of solitude, catching up on the secret stash of comics that I had hidden in the back of my closet.
I'd read sometimes until the flashlight flickered, in need of more juice from the cheap batteries I'd buy at the store with leftover lunch money. I'd fall asleep squinting my eyes so tight that I couldn't make out shapes on a page, and I'd wake up early to wash the sweaty inkstains from...
Darling, I have done this to you
but I've done this to the rivers, too
I have ravaged mountainsides and
leveled acres of forest
I have seen your look before
in the wildlife of the eroding canyon
in the shattered shy, the moon and sun
sharing the shrinking space.
Find something to do
and do it
before I ruin that,
too
Vanquished.
I was confused. This isn't how I expected the novel to end. Who committed the crime? Where was the last chapter with the explanation, the satisfying ending the reader could ponder on when the final lines had been read?
This book looked identical to the others in the bookshop the next day but twenty pages were missing at the back. I was waiting in line to exchange the book when I had a strong mysterious feeling not to.
Returning home I sat on the battered red leather sofa and opened the last page again.
More words than I expected....
Penelope loved the fountain, loved the way the water sprayed, cooling her in the hot sun, making her clothes cling as she called her joy to the heavens.
"What are you doing?" asked the man in the blue uniform.
Some sort of park official, thought the girl. "Nothing. Just enjoying the water."
"This isn't a waterpark, you know," said the man, a note of disapproval hanging from his lips like a dangling cigar, ready to drop and burn.
"So?" she asked. She kicked up a fine spray as her feet pattered against the thin layer that had built up over...
They gathered in the woods. On Summerisle. The pagan community anticipating a good harvest. Burning the trapped victim in The Wicker Man twisted and crafted into shape by the hands of the children and teachers at school.
I watched from a distance, secretly recording. Traitor in the midst. They were my family, friends, neighbours. I was one of them yet I was not. I was a Christian. Would-be outcast in this community, not that anyone knew. This was going to be my parting gift to them.
Freedom from sin. End of a barbaric ritual. Once exposed to the rest of...
"Dammit it's cold today." Bard pulled his hat further down over his forehead and huddled into his fur. "This shit just ain't worth it, Jake." The mule nudged his shoulder and tugged on the lead. He knew where warmth was, as well as his grain.
Man and beast drudged along the logging trail beneath the cold, thin light of the winter sun. Behind them clouds piled up over the horizon, snow dark and ominous. Bard could hear the wind starting, a distant rush of sound bending tree branches and pushing the storm closer.
"Two more miles and we're home," he...