I leave cookies for him because I know that's what the fat bastard wants. It's an old recipe that my grandmother taught me. Sugar cookies, with red and white sprinkles in the shape of candy canes.
I hide behind the couch. It takes a while but I know he's going to come. He always comes. At about midnight, the logs in my fireplace start to tremble. A puff of smoke appears and then I see him.
He's laughing, the jolly bastard. Laughing and carrying his horrible "gifts". He takes the bait right away, as I knew he would. His mouth...
The daring were punished but Alexia hated living at boarding school. She slipped her feet out from under the blanket on her bed, already fully clothed. Quietly, so as not to wake the other girls, she walked to the window, grabbed a warm shawl to wrap around her shoulders, and flung her legs out over the edge of the window sill. She carefully propelled herself forward, flew gracefully through the air, and landed on the ground beneath her window.
A smile spread across her face as she began to walk away from the large brick building that had been her...
When I was twelve, I went to sea with my father. My mother had protested out of worry saying that I was not yet ready for the trials of life at sea, but once she had been persuaded to allow me to go, I went with excitement behind my eyes and the song of the gulls ringing in my ears.
I remember the very first time I set foot on the deck of my father's small sailing ship. I instantly fell in love with it. The clear blue waves, the crisp air, and the reflections in the polished wood...
He ran into the room, his heart pounding and his clothes soaking wet. The boy closed the door behind him and pressed his back against it as strands of damp blond hair stuck to his forehead. He strained to listen for sounds on the other side of the door while the blood pounded through his ears and drops of rain mixed with sweat trickled down his face.
His hand went swiftly into his shirt and smoothly pulled out the leather packet. A sly smile spread slowly accross his face as he felt the cool, smooth surface of the leather...
I hadn't been doing anything out of the ordinary, but what happened that day was definetly out of the ordinary. I was simply sitting at my kitchen table looking out the window at the busy morning street, when all of a sudden, everything stopped. Just like that, everything was frozen in its place. Everything - except me.
At first I panicked, the steady stream of worried thoughts interupting my unsettled feelings about the heart-wrenching break-up that had taken place between my boyfriend and I the night before. After a few moments, I stopped too, although, I was still able to...
White sky. The sky was so white. Sky-white. Sky-writing white smoke in the white sky.
But the bayou was blue. I'm humming it now. Bayou-blue. The snapped crayon read "you-blue."
I wanted to say something. What do I want to say. I raced through my mind looking for a word. Where is it?
What is it?
Sky-white? Bayou-blue. Nah, neither of them. I want to say "succumb" or "parse". Maybe "grenadine"?
I peeled the surface of the bayou up like a t-shirt transfer. But too soon. The corner wrinkled.
The sky went blue
He looked into the surface and his heart stopped a beat, two beats then three at what stared back. His chest caved inwards as a slow smile stretched and rippled across a paler face than his own. The eyes were grim and long and dead and they beat him into submission with a starving stare before he kicked his own ankle and fell to the ground, dirt scraping pits into the palms of his hands. He licked his lips and looked above about him. The roof of the hut looked like the inside of a boat falling from the sky...
"Faster Faster Faster Faster!!!!" he yelled from the front seat. "OK." the other guy punched it. "Too fast! Too Fast!" he yelled, white knuckling the armrest. The other guy hit the brake. He flew forward and met the windshield. "OOF!" "Don't crack my windshield." the other guy said from the driver's seat. A phone was dialled. "Ian broke his face!" At home... "Ian, let me see..." "No." "It'll only be a minute..." "No. No. NO!" "*gasp*" "What happened? ouch ouch ouch..." it's a little crooked."
"I'm with Stupid"
The T-Shirt slogan on the Soul in front of me seemed peculiarly poignant. Stupid he most certainly was, having been 'gathered' with what the lesser demons called the "Camelot curse" - trading their immortal spirits for a lottery win, which regularly brought in hundreds for as little as £10 a life - rarely did they actually define exactly how much they wanted to win. It was all about the rules, really. HIM upstairs… you know… insisted.
The obligatory 'get out' clause, the battle of wits, wasn't required by HIM, but NICK said there wasn't any fun without...
I had done this so many times before. I had done this so often that it simply felt mechanical now. Everytime, we would walk up to each other say hello, and sit down in our desks. And ever day I felt powerless to do anything about the ache in my heart. But I did know what was causing the ache. It was caused by the fact that, although we were so close to one another every single day and although we spoke every single day, it never went any further. I wanted him to hold me and to tell me...