He stares into her bloodshot eyes, her glaring furious and terrified back.
She has not slept in over 24 hours and it is by sheer will-power that she manages to remain erect and alert. He must not win.
It must be over soon, she dreams, hallucinates, cries to heaven and God and all her nightmarish waking hells.
Freshman Biology.
First it was the night sweats. Then the spontaneous attacks of anxiety. Her boyfriend left after the sleep talking began, screaming about failing and nonsense and the like.
A test? No, more than a test. This was it.
Her delusions extended...
Heather had never found her talent.
The smallest amount of knitting made her arms feel like they'd fall from her shoulders. Her paintings looked like they'd been crafted by a toddler. Even decoupage, just gluing paper onto things to decorate them, seemed beyond her reach; in every project the images were wrinkled and unattractive. What was she doing wrong? Time and time again she struggled to release her creative genius, the one she had been told lived inside each and every person, but evidently she preferred to stay hidden deep inside.
Standing on the bridge, she watched the churning waters...
There was originally only one photograph. Now there were two. Well, two halves. Incomplete. Roughly cut down the middle of the bay, neatly bisecting the bench. One was lightly discarded in a pile of "Things to do/sort."
The other was folded and refolded and bent again, then sat in a wallet. Strangely, the one that was thrown aside was the more loved. It showed regret. It showed hope. It showed Faith.
The tattered half showed bitterness, anger, loss. Odd, really as the original showed promise. Anticipation. Love. The man who captured all these strange emotions just thought they were a...
We sat on our toboggan at the top of the hill behind the house. It wasn't much of a sliding hill, but it was easy to walk up, so, there you go.
Me, Jenny, Eric and Becky took turns sliding down on the hot pink crazy carpet and then struggling up the slope in ski pants and too big boots. It was only the third or fourth snow of the season and between the melts there was just enough of the white stuff to pick up a bit of speed on your descent.
Eric or Jenny came up with the...
He sprinted through the line of trees that marked the end of the forest, his sanctuary. He had known something was terribly wrong. His hometown, a small village with just over thirty people in residence, was burning. He had seen the smoke rising into the sky when he woke and ran toward it immediately, praying that she was okay. He hated that he had to leave Jade alone, unprotected, with Lord Westley and his army raging across Torrin, but he dared not stay near people during the full moon. Aidan slowed as he reached the outskirts of the little town....
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
Mrs. Baer had not picked her for the reading group, but that didn't matter, because it didn't mean she wasn't good enough, it just meant that Mrs. Baer didn't KNOW how well she could read! Mom would say it, loud and clear Emily could hear it in her head, "If you'd just made yourself noticed, Emily, then you would not have been ignored!" This is what Mom always told both of her older sisters when they became too meek.
"You get...
Dispossessed
All he had to his name was this park bench, and not even that.
As he sat and gazed off into the distance, he contemplated his fate. He'd lost his job, then his home, then his family. Nothing was left to him, not even his body that lay six feet under rotting in a pauper's grave. His spirit sat on the bench that the shelter had dedicated to his memory. Suicide had not ended his suffering. Dispossessed of everything he had held dear, he contemplated getting his life back.
His ex-wife stood looking at the bench, at his name...
I looked up at the cathedral door and I thought this is what it means, this is how it all culminates, in this big round arch towering above my head. It was like a mouth, opening wide to swallow me up and draw me down inside, to consume and digest me. Just like the church, I thought. This is what it does. Consumes me.
After I'd breached the threshold, the sounds of the war outside hushed and all I heard was the soft murmur of the others, deeper inside, the soft crying of lost and destroyed. Here's where we come,...
A reflection..
A clear copy of yourself, The one shard of glass showing us what other see of yourself..
Wether you want it or not, their everywhere...
I stood there.. Frozen.. Heartbroken..
I looked myself in the eyes as a crystal layer grew upon my eyes, He was behind me.. Hold my waiste telling me i wasnt good enough.
Telling me id never make it, telling me id never get there..
My father busted through the door as the hallucinations faded. Th smell of alcahole reeked through the air,He had been drinking again..
He threw me to the floor and...
Without a doubt, the hat makes the man.
Douglas VanHornersmeltser knew this. He also knew that without removing his hat, the bald spot atop his head would never receive the proper tan he needed for his date at precisely 7 p.m. on the night of Saturday the 11th of January.
A prudent New Englander, Douglas had rarely ventured to concern himself with tanning, his chaste, leathery skin almost always coated in the finest sheer of exfoliated heaven. Yet on this very occasion he sought the affections of the lady up 12th Avenue, Lydia Snout.
An elegant woman with slender legs...