Portraits. Hanging in the gallery; all her own work. Self-portraits, and ones of famous people, she had finally found her passion.
Buyers, on-lookers, and art collectors alike all came to marvel at the paintings. The gallery was on Main Street in the City. Nashville had always been her home, and her dream to have her portraits on display for the Country Music Capital dwellers.
Her favorite portrait was one she had painted of her and her brother Damien. This one in particular, Leila was sitting on Damien's lap, looking up at him while their cat, Josephine was sitting at her...
The detective sighed and adjusted the Stetson balanced on his head, fingers rubbing the brim lightly. "Where're the survivors?" he asked, looking over to his deputy. "They're over that way. Shaken up, but there were more survivors than deaths." he replied, gesturing down the tracks to a small mob of people milling alongside the derailed train. The detective nodded. The crash was most likely an accident, but the police had to investigate anyway.
He staggered down the embankment dotted with scraggly sage to the wreck. The red dust of the desert clay had been kicked up in the skidding crash,...
everything flows
Time lay scattered everywhere. In the depths of the forest he could hear the 1700s exploring; somewhere to his left there were the ancient druids.
everything is meant to flow
The watches had stopped. All of them. Then again, everything was happening all at once, and there is only so much that clockwork can stand. Mechanisms are man-made and they can be broken, just as man can.
time is meant to flow
He was aware that this couldn't last - not that there was really a concept of lasting now (not a meaningful one, anyway). The universe would...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room.
The 'experts' can talk all they like about Sleep Paralysis but I'm not convinced. I want to believe them, I really do, but that 'somebody' has always been there.
It's my first memory and will probably be my last. A shadow, a presence looming over my life. Never speaking but all seeing and so very dark.
Spritualists want to convince me it's my 'guardian angel' but I'm not convinced. I don't feel very guarded by it. Quite the opposite.
I should have never acknowledged it, never mentioned it, never tried to...
Until now, she never thought of herself as pretty.
Each morning she would stare in the mirror and try to pick one good feature of herself, different from the day before. It was never difficult for her, she liked the color of her eyes and the thickness of her hair but until this moment, she had never felt put together.
But in this moment, with the boy of her dreams watching her descend down the staircase in a gorgeous white dress, she felt pretty.
She felt the tears welling up in her eyes as she passed her Grandmother and felt...
She'd always come running when I called. I could have called her to come get a splinter out of my hand, to help me with my homework, to get me out from the tree in my backyard, or just so I could see her smiling face for hours as we talked. I was so use to this that the idea that some day she wouldn't come running when I called never even crossed my mind. I loved her with every single particle that made up my body.
At this exact moment though the only thought I could think was that...
i bet i can beet u home shouted ben as he leapt past muddy puddles not caring about getting covered by whatevar was in his path "hay mum said that u have to look after me wait!!" cried lizzie bens little sister "you better keep up then" "oh your soo anoying" ben crashes through the kitchen door covering the floor in mud as mum gives him a look that ses i have jus spent the last half hour washing that floor and were is your sister i told u to keep an eye on her but mum i was only...
"And now, a nice, juicy twist. That's it. Keep twisting. One final push! Aaaaand release. Other side, now. Raise your left hand in the air, look toward the ceiling. Now twist!"
Sweat dripping from my brow down to my neck down to my collar bone down to my underwear. Release. Downward dog.
"Chataranga! Keep going guys, you're doing great!"
Heaviness of covers, you tuck me in as you leave. I don't stir, I don't breathe. Your receding back.
"Now breathe in, and let it go."
There were mountains. There were hours to drive. Everything I measure, I measure it like...
"They won't be of any help."
"Why? Did they not see anything?"
"I think they saw too much."
The man in the white coat was right. That was what had happened. We had all seen too much. Too much of the evil that had passed under the sky that night. We had born witness to horrors that no human tongue can describe. And by the way that the animals had fallen silent, not even they knew how to communicate what had happened.
We all sat in silence, those of us cursed to survive. It was by group consensus, unspoken as...
Peasants. That's what he called them. To their faces. Idiots. Perverts.
The fact they were his employers didn't seem to matter at that very moment. They sacked him and it wasn't until he was standing in the street in the pouring rain that he wondered what on earth had happened.
One moment he was being congratulated for achieving the top sales rank that month, next he was shoved out the back door clutching his P45.
As he looked through the window, he could see Riley, smirking. Something was odd about this as Riley was his best friend.
Back in the...