Hard to think now, gazing into her eyes as we lay side by side, that we'd only met on the train an hour ago. I'd been standing at first. She sat with a mother and two small kids, chatting away; she'd been so gentle, loving, playful with them. Occasionally, she'd look out the window. Several times she caught my eye in the glass, and smiled at my dimmer reflection. When the family got off at Bristol I sat down, the carriage empty now. We chatted about our lives, her boyfriend, my wife and grown up daughters. A generation gap meant...
Rose wished she'd never agreed to that picture.
The look, the provocative stare, running her hands through her hair like that? That wasn't her. How did she expect to be taken seriously as an author when her picture looked like an ad for those 1-800 numbers, the ones they put on late at night with the skimpily clad women.
Maybe she could play it off. "I write humor; it was a joke!" she'd claim. The truth was, authors got paid almost nothing to bare their souls to their readers. It didn't matter if it was humor, scifi, or even detective...
I am really nervous. It's there. Looming. And I feel like if I move it will know, and everything around me will crumble.
So I wait and I wonder. Why I came. Why I am still here. Why there aren't forces out there that could rectify what is clearly the most dire of situations.
But I know there are no such forces. It's just me. Alone. Except I am not alone. It is still here. There. Moving closer.
I know there are only two choices: stay and await my ultimate defeat. The ultimate death. Stagnation...darkness. Or move closer to it,...
The mail box never had anything I wanted so I went onto the next home. Usually I picked up a few interesting pieces from No 6, it was a busy household. But no 4 only ever contained a thin airmail so I knew there wasn't any cash. Until last Sunday that is. Brown envelope, thick. Tore it open around the corner of the block, $2,000.
I never realised the significance of what I'd done, not that day, nor that week. But first week in February I knew I was in trouble. The house had been under surveillance. Not by the...
She didn't look at him. She couldn't. He used to be her father. He used to buy her sunflower seeds at the little convenience store near their home. She used to sit on his shoulders as he walked the dirt road, both of them searching the skies for the crows they could here.
He told her stories of a time when her mother dressed her in frilly dresses with lacy bloomers. He told her of how she would look all over the yard for Easter Eggs hidden within easy reach of her tiny little hands. He told her stories about...
"This is your fault," his wife said to him. If you would just put your mother in her place I wouldn't have to and we wouldn't be fighting right now.
He replied loudly, "My fault? How is it my fault she's nosy? She doesn't mean anything by it anyway. You don't have to be such a bitch about every little thing."
"Oh. My. God. Seriously?" She was on a roll now. "It's your fault she's so nosy because you never say anything at all to her when she crosses a line. And once again, I wouldn't have to be such...
I don't know, I just feel like I'm not really here at the moment. My mind is always somewhere else. I don't know where though, for you see I have actually lost my mind.
I feel like I'm split into four people. The solid me? She's just not present right now, I don't know where she is. Like I said, I lost her. I didn't mean to though...
I promise.
The saddest thing about losing me, is that nothing ever feels 'right' anymore. You know what I mean! That gut feeling you get when you make decisions or when you...
The year was 1986. My home, a typical home in Suburbia, USA. My life, a typical American teenager, filled with angst and dissatisfaction at my lot in life. Little did I realize how that life would soon change.
The summer of my sixteenth year was hot and humid, as most summers were in sunny Florida. My car was an old Chevy with the cloth interior roof held up by thumbtacks, the best I could afford on the money I saved working nights after school at the local movie theatre. Weekends I'd drive to my boyfriend's house, past the streetwalkers trying...
Everytime I took the Color Quiz I got the same results even though my life changed so much over the months since I first tried it. Self absorbed, seeking sexual satisfaction, emotionally distant, needing approval, always in relationships yet unconnected and vulnerable. This didn't make any sense.
I was happily married (three years) everyone said I was a really kind hearted generous woman, very friendly and open with friends and strangers alike.
After our anniversary meal, Tom wiped his mouth on the linen napkin and sighed. I liked to see he enjoyed all the hours I spend in a small,...
The words hovered beneath my glowing finger, power incarnate. I lifted the text, spinning it lazily in the air, before hurling the curse at the image of my nemesis.
The photo I had ripped from the backcover of her book dissolved, dripping onto the table, her face hideously deformed, the black ink staining the tablecloth beneath.
"She thinks she can write horror," I said, the deathly silence of the basement swallowing my words. "She doesn't know what horror is." I smiled. "Yet."