What would it be like to break into a hundred different worlds? A thousand? Would he ever get used to it, the way you get used to the routines of a new job? Ray looked at the device he held in his hand. Abruptly, he tossed it up, sending it spinning end o…

This isn't just to say

That I have eaten the plums

From the icebox that you unwisely left unlocked

.

Like, you didn't even install a lock

What were you thinking?

.

Any butthead could come along and steal your plums!

You're damn lucky it was me.

.

They wer…

Realistically it wasn't going to happen. The lighter dark of the road seemed to go on forever, winding through the greater outer dark of the forest around us. More than anything we were hungry, so hungry it made us weak. Hungry, filthy, and unprotected--t…

Dreaming heart breaks

there's no escape

when you're with him

I drown within

your sweet memory

. . .

You're breaking free

aching tears sliding

now they fall free

sobs spaced between

and then you leave

a sweet memory

. . .

It's all nothing

'ship corrup…

I followed the stream up to where I had dammed it a year ago. I was surprised it had held this long. It hadn't taken much to build, just a couple dozen rocks stacked in the right places. Looking back, I wondered why I had done it at all. I mean I knew the…

I felt around the sides of my neck. She was right. The skin there was sore, tender to the touch. My suspicion of her seemed justified and came flooding back. I was choked recently and she finds me, leash in hand? I don't know if it was guilt or what that …

Thanks to a bright sun and a wide cloudless sky, the afternoon was warm with nothing but the echo of a breeze to prevent it from getting too hot. That just goes to show that monsters weren't caged by night. They can show up at any time, even a day as nic…

"Here it gors. Me and my cogs was moffing along the murky part of the Long Tews, minding our own business-grifts, we was. When all of a sudden these two 'barians spilled outta a drunkard's den. Real strangers, they was, and really going at it, faces like …

I hopped over a pair of the ash-filled streams, so contaminated that the clear water of my childhood had become an opaque gray. The air wasn't much better but it was getting clearer. The sun behind the smoky sky was still such an angry red that I could fe…

He squirmed and screamed but he wasn't going anywhere. My left arm was securely locked around his upper body. The claws of my left hand had perforated his upper abdomen and were interlocked with his lower ribs. With my right hand, I slowly shredded his sk…

Story is marked as mature

There is a light that comes past my window early in the morning. It's not that bright, certainly not bright enough to wake me from a deep sleep. Unfortunately my dreams have been troubled lately and worse yet, broken by urgent calls of nature that treat m…

Funerals are odd ducks, aren't they? I mean they bring out the oddness in people. And odd people. Probably ducks too. I mean if the burying place is near a pond it's likely to attract its fair share of ducks, wouldn't you say? Like ponds and ducks, funera…

Suddenly her simply standing there watching me made her suspect. Why was this girl trying to help me? Sure it had been her dog that had woke me up but there had been no reason to stick around after her apology. She had made sure I was okay. By all account…

ROBERT. He was hardly a scoundrel, as you seem to suppose,

But a man of distinction and charm.

From his pale, curving lips to his aquiline nose,

All his features made pulses run warm.

In his elegant home, in his opulent clothing,

He had sumptuous taste a…

I awoke to soft light in the hallway outside my room. Soft greenness pulsed faintly about chest high, far below where the hallway light was mounted. The ebb and flow of it's intensity gave it a kind of bobbing motion.

There was no sign of the sun outside…

Daryl scrubbed at his skin wishing it were lighter. White would be good but no amount of bleach would make it look natural. Lighter skin could him safe passage in and out of Louisiana as long as no one looked too closely, which they would. Paranoia fueled…

Doctor Tanner waited until the clock read 8:00 before approaching Darlene. She was munching on baby carrots while watching some kind of colorful cartoon on the wall screen.

“It's time for bed.” Dr. Tanner said gently.

Without looking, Darlene replied, “…

Today, I was hit with a ton of bricks. Killed me outright... stone dead.

I never even saw it coming. I was just walking along with a friend, talking about something trivial just to make conversation. Then, suddenly... right out of the blue, wham!

So wha…

“Do you have a wallet?”

I looked at the girl without comprehension, my mind focused on the fact that I no longer had a name, just this infinite hollow blank where my name used to be. I felt naked. Undefined. Like something vital had been stripped away.

…

I watched you burn.

I watched as your multi-hued plumage singed and reduced to grey, dead ash.

I watched powerlessly as your skin, flesh and bone blistered, seared and charred. Before long, a pile of soot and slag was all that remained where you had bee…

Three of us rode north in my 2002 Camry. Sometimes it felt too small, but having recently been in a Volvo from the eighties, I was forced to concede that cars had gotten a lot roomier since the time of ALF. Wil and David (never Dave) didn't feel the same …

The inside of the tent was dark and cold and claustrophobic. Bree rolled over in her blanket, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders. Dan, her mom's new boyfriend, whispered something on the other side of the tent causing her mom to giggle. Bree rolled …

Story is marked as mature

The room, if you can call it that, for it was enormous, easily the largest single chamber I'd seen down here in the dark, was a nightmare landscape of chaos. I had to shake my head and blink my eyes several times to try to rid myself of the vertigo it i…