When I took the photo it was still light. Tom threw his arms around me and twirled us both around, our shrieks and laughter echoed on the mountain. Ten minutes later he was dead. Torn to pieces by an unexpected pack of hungry wolves. None of them touched me. They circled, growling but left me alone. Even when I ran to the trees and attempted to climb, slipping back down the icy bark. Ignoring screams, snowballs I managed to throw. Dragging Tom's body away they left me alone to my grief, shock, sorrow, disbelief and paralysing fear.
He didn't think he was much of a cat person until he met Matilda.
When Luke first set eyes on Matilda in the local cafe he knew it was her. It was HER. His one and true love. She just didn't know it yet...
Every day he'd see her and two months rolled on by before he introduced himself.
"Hello, my name's Luke and you are?" he asked one morning nervously.
"Matilda..." she replied cautiously.
Matilda! Oh Matilda Matilda Matilda! What a beautiful name for a beautiful woman!
A few awkward seconds ticked past.
"I um...I've seen you around and...
I wonder. I really wonder. He always enjoyed pulling a fast one over me, he did. So I suppose this wasn't a surprise, even after all these years: he would have probably planned it all this time, ready to spring it over me, and watch my befuddlement. He did that all the time before, so why should he stop now?
Then again, that's probably me being paranoid. 'Ox bow lake'. What the hell does that mean? And why, on earth, did I have him- or her- there? It could be anyone of the many enemies I've made over the course...
I always felt like I was stuck in a bubble. Like the Pope in his vehicle. On display like the Queen of England. A goldfish in a bowl. Maybe it was my shyness or my wart on my left cheek. Maybe it was the lisp that made everyone return my greetings with a "What did you say?" Maybe it was my slumped back, the hump that made shopping for blazers so difficult.
"Who's in there?" small children would say, peering at me on a Sunday in the park. "Don't bother that nice man," their mothers would say. The mothers were...
Through the files, there were instances going as far back as ancient Egypt. This creature had been in the human world for centuries. Amut, the Heart Eater, fated to consume the hearts of men who were evil and corrupt.
All across time the demon roamed, scraping its existence into the memory of mankind. But something was off about this log file in particular. 'Encounter Log No. 682-426-1991' it read. Where did this page come from, though? It was not in the database, nor in any files that had been scoured previously.
It had the normal redacted information for security measures,...
"Bitch don't know how to swim. Bitch need to learn how to swim wit da sharks."
"What?" my Grandmother said.
"You see, whatchoo need he'ah is a metafough."
"A what?" she spluttered.
"A metafough!" he insisted.
We weren't in uptown anymore.
"I think what the kind doctor is trying to say is that it helps to use metaphor to explain your condition, Grandma," I said, waxing poetic to his accented jargon.
God love her, but my granny is a racist old bitch. Nobody would be more happy to see her kick that bucket more than me, were it not for...
Jack had checked every store. He'd gone to every hardware, garden or nursery store, and then he'd gone back.
They gave him the same spiel everywhere he went. "No seeds, dahling," they'd say. "The apples had no seeds this year."
Despairing, he sat down at the wooden bar, rested his elbows and called for the tender. "Gimme a hard cider. You're best stuff."
"Sorry," the tender said, laying her voluptuousness on the bar across from him. "No apples this year, means no cider. No apples last year, means no cider. No apples for five years, no cider. Get the picture?"...
The embroidery was hard to steal. Laser beams criss crossing the museum walls and floors. Two hours later I was opening the bag of cash, counting, shaking hands with my client, ignoring the warning thoughts invading my head since the moment I'd been hired.
'Moonlite Glow' was cursed. Apparently, anyone who handled it suffered misfortune. The last four owners died unexpectedly, gruesome and slow. One fell out of his bedroom window straight onto steel sharp railings, not found until the next day. Another drowned in his hot tub after his big toe got stuck somehow. He shut off his mind...
This is not what Steve had in mind when he signed up to test the virtual reality technology at work. Not at all. He thought it would be unicorns farting rainbows. But this was ridiculous.
The scenes were patterned after video games. Not because the team wasn't creative, but because that meant the testers didn't need to take the time to learn the rules of a new environment.
Steve had pulled Super Mario Bros. from the lot. Except there was a fatal flaw in the technology. Enemies didn't die, they just disappeared for a bit. Then they came back with...
The dream had been wonderful, yet it would never be real.
I am blind yet everything I experience at night is always in varying shades, or what I think are shades. I question if what I see is the same whites, blacks, red, yellow, orange, green etc and all the tones in between that everyone else can see.
I am lucky in a way that I know what to wear, I can sense the differences between shades, they have their individual feelings, sometimes I can even hear them like musical notes.
The dream last night was different in that there...