It wasn't my fault. It couldn't have been. She was dead when I got there.
I know my fingerprints were on the gun. It was my gun, of course my fingerprints were on it. Yes, I was the last one to see her alive. But that was hours before she died. I do stand to inherit a large sum of money. I loved her. Why would I kill her over something like that?
The CCTV could easily have been doctored. Besides, you don't see the killer's face. It must be a coincidence that she and I have the same build....
I will put my fingers together and pull the grass up from the roots. I will do it before my mother comes outside. If I don't she'll ask "what have you been doing out here all this time?" But if I do, I'll have something to show for myself. I'll give her the stalks of grass as if they are flowers. She may thank me, but she more likely will wonder why I bothered to dig up the good grass.
I will move away from home one day soon. I will plant a garden where I live. I will make...
Tell her, he told himself. Tell her before it's too late. From a scuffed-over, leather-upholstered chair near the front window, he watched her. She turned the crank on the machine. Or knob. It made a screeching sound. On the counter she banged something hard. Again.
He looked around. No one noticed.
She swiped at the counter, then her hair. She was wearing some kind of kerchief. That's not right, he thought. And scrambled for it, what do they call it: This pleased him.
Haltingly, he crept forward. Praying no one would notice him, because they might stop him before he...
Listen to the sounds that the butterflies make. Listen what they say when they communicate, as they talk to each other, their little butterfly whispers, back and forth, their conversation. Through these special headphones, you can for the first time hear the conversation of the butterflies.
Sadly, twenty seven years ago was the last time we saw real, live butterflies. The great butterfly passing of 2017 was a hard, lonely time for human beings.
But thankfully, forward thinking scientists recorded every sound, every movement, every bit of data they could about 2102 different butterfly species. And now you, through the...
Mira had been blind for several years, but in a way, she never quite lost her sight. The smell of jalapeños sliced on the kitchen slabs made her taste green and itch with stinging eyes. The jasmine by the porch wrapped her in the white cream of Sunday clouds. The library books were still breathing dust and oil from the days they were salvaged from the great fire.
It was the fire that made Mira blind. It was the fire that Mira started. It was the fire that Mira conjured when she read from the black tome.
He ran into the room, his heart poundinf, and his clothes soaking wet. He had never felt sich all consuming fear as when he had walked into her bedroom to find her gone.
His darling, his little one, the part of him that was part of his wife as well. His Bella.
The ransom note was pretty standard so the police said. £5000000 pounds. Non sequential. Not marked.
He had the money, so he got it together and walked to the meet.
They got the money, but his Bella wasn't there. He heard no more from the kidnappers.
The police...
"Grandpop's teeth didn't look like that."
"How do you know?"
"Because mom always said you got his teeth. Do your teeth look like that?"
"Maybe after they'd been in the ground for fifty years."
"Not even. Look at the length of them."
"No, teeth keep growing after you die."
"That's nails, dummy. And they have to be attached still. You think teeth keep growing if they're just loose like this?"
"Who can say?"
"You know who would know?"
"Yeah, but she can't exactly tell us, now can she?"
"Well, she'd know for sure."
"Grandma's probably the one who did it...
There was a stage. A microphone. A guy with a guitar and another at a piano. One spotlight trying to mark out everything up there and missing the edges. And that was it. If the audience in the jazz bar had been expecting anything more, anything grander or, well, jazzier, they were disappointed. Most were. It was a good place to be disappointed in.
It was a good place to spend money when it had nowhere else to be spent too. That’s mostly what these people were doing. Spending money that they didn’t know what else to do with. Spending...
I was free. This is where I had always felt free. The air rushed up beside and around me in the form of small, rounded bubbles. I plunged deeper and deeper, holding my breath until I could feel my lungs begin to scream. The whistling noise in my ear told me I needed to go to the surface. I close my eyes as I kicked my feet, pushed my arms through the water like propellers, feeling the rush of water around me. My head cracked through the surface of the water and I gasped, gulping down as much air as...
He had hoped it wouldn't come to this. Making a strategic withdrawal into a tunnel, luring in the rest of the elite squadron that pursued him to pick them off two or three at a time now that they were forced into tighter quarters. He had not heard the sound of the train from far off, and figured he had the time to keep running, slash a few soldiers, put some distance between them, and repeat.
The tunnel was deceptively longer than he presumed.
He ducked beneath the spray of incoming bullets before making a horizontal slash, Rihatsu cleaving through...