It wasn't so bad, the cancer, eating me from the inside out. Started with headaches, diagnoses, hopes and dreams dashed like fine china on the asphalt. My hands shaking, pillow wet in the morning, children gripping me, knowing without words that life was changing. Daddy is dying, mommy said. Like grandma. No, daddy isn't going to heaven. There is no heaven. Only the great void. Its nothing to be afraid of Sofie. Daddy loves you. More doctors and pills, and then pain and then...nothing. The desire to life squashed like a grape on the supermarket floor. Life itself spinning, a...

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Fred wanted the puppets. He wanted all the puppets, man. If Fred couldn't have puppets, he'd be a miserable SOB. All he could ever think about was puppets. He wore his socks on his hands. That's how much he loved puppets.

So when he saw the Punch and Judy set on ebay, he knew he had to act. Problem was: Sylvester Stallone was coming over for lunch. He'd slaved for hours over the meal (pickles on rye bread. And figs.) He wanted to impress Sylvester Stallone with stories of how he rubbed Cheez Whiz into the hair of his buttocks,...

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The trick was picking the tired, lost ones. That was the trick. Many passengers coming into Warsaw Airport had been warned about 'unlicensed' taxis, but if you chose well they would be too confused to argue. The trick was getting their bag. Once you had that, with a "Let me carry your bag, Sir/Madam," they would have to follow you.

The trick was to walk fast enough to scare them into following you, for fear of losing their baggage in the busy arrivals lounge, but not so fast the airport police would think you were stealing something.

That was the...

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"This is it?" Leila said with a wrinkled nose, her hands were clasped behind her back as she slowly approached the animal.

Myron stared at the blue ribbon sitting in a bow on the back of her head, eclipsing her dark brown tresses like an enormous butterfly. His eyes traveled down to her feet and the way her calves flexed as she walked on her toes around the creature.

"I wasn't lying, was I?"

"Dunno," Leila replied, and she hopped on a crate, her lanky, boyish form backlit by golden rays. It shone through her hair, making it more like...

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It's here somewhere.

How did we lose it in the first place? I don't dare say it out loud, because they'll blame me.

We've been at this for hours and still we haven't found it.

I was told to put it someplace safe. Someplace it wouldn't be lost.

But I did. Well, maybe not technically, more like made it impossible to get to. How was I supposed to know they were going to pick this up and ship it out overseas as donations. I blame my crazy Aunt Ida, that woman has a bad habit of promising things to the...

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The bear was furious.
Dr Who had eaten his chocolate again. This time he wsn't going to let the jumped up timelord get away with it.
He turned to the Cyberman and whispered.
The Tombliboos watched with interest as the plan unravelled and Amy Pond let out a scream as the Cyberman picked up the Dr by the throat and threw him into the shoebox.
The bear now turned on the Gruffalo much to the owls amusement. The Gruffalo screamed and ran behind the bookcase where he hid amongst the dust and biscuit crumbs.
The three Daleks (of varying sizes)...

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The maple leaves will change and fall with a certain grace - November will begin.

Carla read that sentence in her Literature textbook over and over, and the thought that kept running through her mind was, 'Who edited this book?'

That wasn't entirely true, but her internal monogue ran along these lines. Was she the only tenth grader who knew that semicolons connected independant phrases? Older people complained about how texting was ruining the language, but what difference did that make when a text book author, in what she assumed was an edited textbook ILLUSTRATING the language, couldn't even catch...

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Dane took another well-aimed pump at the car. The iron pipe splattered headlight glass all over the curb.

"Good fuck!" I sputtered, "What's wrong with your freako eyes?"

"I'm sick. Some sort of crow disease. Can't be helped. Hand me that roll of tape." He pumped his fist while taping diapers to the antenna with his free hand, reeling to some invisible unholy orchestra. Probably electro. Probably some sort of depeche mode shit zonking around in his gourd. His eyes bugged yellow and I knew he had finally gotten news that yes, it was cancer, and yes, it was hereditary....

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Waves. The sound was the first thing she noticed. She had to be somewhere near the ocean. She took a moment to register her immediate situation. Her right hand grasped a jutting piece of rock, and her left held tight to a thick branch that had somehow taken root in the cliff face. Her feet rested on a narrow ledge of rock that was no more than a few inches. She was thankful for her small feet, which her mother used to say were her best attribute.

She had to be at least 20 feet up. The ocean was too...

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The conversation lasted two words: Alright? ...Yeah

It wasn't groundbreaking, it wasn't revolutionary, it wasn't even poetry, but it was all they needed to say.

They had been the best of friends once, closer than brothers. George had had his own room at Jack's house, Jack had had his own shelf in George's fridge. But somewhere along the way, they had lost that.

Was it because Lissy, George's ex-girlfriend had hated Jack, was it because of the fact that Jack went off to uni while George stayed in their hometown, or had it merely been because of the fact that...

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