Blood dripped down from my arms to my legs. I was bound to a pole in an empty room with nothing but a mirror to look at. They were there though, they were listening. I would confess but I didn't know what I did or why I'm here. I was screaming and thrashing trying to break free, but for what reason?
"I know your there listeners, but for what purpose? Are you using me or I am I already used? ANSWER ME!"
The speakers squeaked and a harsh, deep voice called to me.
"We are not using you, you are...
Three Chances. Two Donors. One Hope.
December 4th. Today is the third anniversary of your first bone marrow transplant. Did I actually say “first transplant”? Who in the hell has another one? It is still hard for me to imagine that you did. What parent walks around carrying those things in their memories?
You had such an amazing donor. He gave you six months of good health and a year of life. He must have been so brave and selfless to give you such a gift. I wish that I could thank him in person. But that would never happen...
My mother loved colour. She spent the last weeks of her life in a hospital bed, with its monotone greys and whites. People gave her all kinds of gifts and cards. But her favourite one was a bright purple robe with pink stitching.
That gift was from me. Truth is, I'm more of a tactile person. Yet I knew this was what she craved most--her two favourite colours in the world.
At her funeral, we released balloons in pink and purple. Or, rather, everyone else did. I held onto mine. I wasn't ready to let her go yet.
Today, though,...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. It was snowing, freezing her slowly. She continued shivering rubbing her arms to try and get warm. She started losing feeling, first her feet, moving up slowly. She panicked, she tried to move but she was stuck. It felt like something was holding her in place. The world started to go fuzzy, everything slowly losing colour, fading away. She saw a silhouette of a person, walking past, they turned their head and started running into the alleyway, saying something that she could not hear. The young...
"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."
At least I assumed so otherwise they never would have activated my Stored Intelligence Module.
Dad had been the brains so when he died I had been all too happy to sell out to Graftech. I had paid for the deluxe package and knew that when I died I would be downloaded into my custom android body.
But then had come the stock-market crash of 2241 and all that had changed. I lost virtually everything and now...
The farmer had just left, when the old woman paused scooping up the silver to ponder on his telling. "Blue eyes? Could have sworn they were brown."
She shrugged and lifted a loose board to join the fee with treasured cousins beneath the stair. A knock at the door left her breathless in the hurry to conceal her hoard.
"Who… who is it?" she wheezed. Rather than answer, the caller entered quickly and fell behind the door.
"It's about the eye drops." whispered the same maid as had visited before. "I'd put them in when the Mistress startled me. I...
The year was 1986. Sorry I made a mistake, it was 1896. The day my grandfather made his first monster made from ancestral skeletons and fresh body parts (carriage accident) sneaked out of the family vault, brought to life from a mixture of alchemy, science, advance biology and sheer madness.
I wish it was 1986 because I would have killed the freak hybrid and put an end to what followed.
My family have been living on the island with unnartural servants and companions, the misfits made from grandfather's experiments and their miraculous offspring.
I am as much of a prisoner...
There was blood on my pillow.
My nose was dry. I hadn't bit my cheek. I hadn't somehow lost a tooth. A quick examination of my skull told me that it remained intact.
Oh, duh, I have DNA-Vision. I forget sometimes.
I scanned the blood on my pillow. It wasn't mine.
So where had it come from?
"Ah ha! It was me!" yelled someone from the foot of my bed.
It was my arch-nemesis, The Hemophiliac. Of course!
"What have you done?!" I roared.
"I snuck into your bedroom last night and bled on your pillow! But don't worry; I...
"You heard me right, friends. The evil that is draining our country of vitality is NOT Wall Street, NOT Washington D.C., NOT the Chinese or video games or foreign oil! No sir!"
I looked out at them, every one of them shocked at hearing this deviation from the party line, hearing my "lunatic heresies", as the bloggers and cable news harpies would no doubt dismiss them.
"NO SIR!" I thundered, rocking them back in their seats. "I tell you that the greatest threat to America and TO THE WORLD is this scourge, this pestilence, this new opiate of the masses:...
"Midnight on the roof.". That was all her note had said. He smiled to himself as he climbed the stairway up to the small rooftop. Sure he'd been a bit rough with her when he'd cornered her at the party but some girls like it that way. Well she obviously had otherwise she wouldn't have contacted him again. Panting a bit he arrived at the security door and pushed his way through. She was there waiting for him as he had hoped but he wasn't alone. "Have you met my big brothers Mark and Jamie" she said as she slipped...