"Anything?" Bantu asked.

"Gimme a sec," replied Shari. With a gloved hand she reached into the mist hovering before her, dipping a small test tube into it and filling it as best she could. With the other hand she stoppered it before withdrawing it and ge…

I vented to a friend, relatively new one but on the whole levelheaded and sympathetic. Basic advice is talk to them, tell them to quit, or else just block them

which would be good except I'm anxious about telling anyone so directly that they're bothering …

Well, today sucks

My external HD seems to have died, all my video projects were there and that WAS the backup, I'd erased the rest from my computer so I could actually use it.

And this girl keeps on mak

7897897897897

and this other girl keeps insisting sh…

Jewel sat astride her palomino horse, clutching the urn full of her husband Kimbel’s ashes. It had been a few weeks since his death. She’d been waiting until the next full moon to fulfill her promise.

The two had met through the Greenbriar Community Th…

Story is marked as mature

The town of Greenbriar sits about thirty miles north of nowhere. Founded in the mid 1800s, the town grew up around the railroad and cotton. The town’s founding father, Henry Greenbriar, moved here as part of a massive land grant that brought settlers to…

I sobbed. The Dragon saved me from myself. I got lost in the fog. I was stopped by the wall of despair and I caused the explosion that gave me the pieces to build my fortress, all so I could stay hidden deep inside myself. The Dragon refused to le…

"You are swift, indeed, young Peregrine," the queen said, her eyes betraying her concern, "but I fear that not even speed such as yours will save you."

"I am strong, too, your majesty," his tone was all deference, yet his words were not.

"Strong indeed,…

The knock came just after midnight. I’d been laying in bed listening to this old 80s band called the Cure when I heard it. A soft tapping, so faint that I almost missed it. Then it came again, louder and more insistent.

I rolled out of bed and saw a b…

Story is marked as mature

A wailing, rainy night. One of the most beautiful things.

I smiled into the raindrops and they flowed like therapy as if from my eyes

My eyes unfocused at the sparkling streetlights as I strode forward by the park

My feet squishing in my messed up sneake…

To Detective Hawk, the more she examined the scene, the more she felt the whole thing was an accident, an illusion. The ink was spilled, not spilling from her body. She lay slumped, not in a defensive pose. There were no glasses of drink, no tubes for gas…

Something scrabbled at my wall. The scratch and scrape of something ripping my precious wall apart stirred me from my mournful reverie. I backed away from the thing that was tearing in earnest at my fort, eyes wide, body shaking. Don't take my wall. Don't…

Story is marked as mature

Jacqueline, never Jack or Jackie, swirled the ice around the dregs of her mojito. It was her favorite drink, she had ordered them all around the world, from Mexico, to London, to China. Hell, she'd even taken a couple of barrels with her through the Andes…

"That makes three..." An exhausted smile on my face as the chalk screeches another tally mark onto the chalkboard.

This superhero work takes so much more out of you than I realized it would.

My restoration chamber is beginning to look more and more like…

A wholly imaginary girl appeared at the end of his desk as he typed. His mind immediately jumped to the word "girl" but she was in fact a "woman," by any real definition. He had just always thought of her as youth personified. A late teen for all eternity…

It was Thursday and much like Arthur Dent before her, Maya had never quite been able to get the hang of them.

The silhouette across the way turned into a distinct figure now. Matthew. She had hoped for someone else somehow, but it was he that she intende…

Fijit was a teenager. And an orphan. And hadn't exactly been hanging out with the good crowd.

She was kicked out of the orphanage last week and hadn't seen any of her "running mates" since. Once you are out of the protection of the nuns, you are on your …

Into the breach

Dear buddys, yup!

Or with our dead

The wall fill up.

In peace it’s groovy

To be chill

But when war blasts

Set guns to kill

Like tigers, rawr

And act so mad

Shoot like a cannon

Go fight them, lad!

Just set your teeth

Stretch nostrils wid…

to be or not?

I feel so mobile

shifting. which one

Is more noble?

Suffering with

Sticks or rocks

Outrageoius fortun

My mind socks

A sea of troubles

Splishy splash

I’ll fight it all

the sea I bash

to die,. to sleep,

Perhchance to drim

that is the rub

Or…

Third place.

Some people would be happy that they won third place if they worked hard and tried their best. But third was a fall for me and I fell hard.

I knew I wasn't first place material, never was, never would be. I was cool with that. There would a…

The squid-girl resurfaced through the bleak waters. “Quick! Can you swim?”

I affirmed that I could and before I could do anything she had wrapped her cold tentacle fingers around my wrist and pulled me in.

The water was dark and as she guided away from …

From the wreckage I pulled the largest bits to form a low wall around me. Their form, size, and hardness gave them function for my needs. I wasn't sure what I was keeping out, I only knew I had to keep me IN.

I was unsafe. I was leaking all over a radioa…

Well, it's hard to stay chipper, to keep up my hope.

Such dark thoughts crowd my mind in a throng!

As bad news piles like snowdrifts upon the steep slope,

I don't think the descent will take long...

.

As a child, full of life, I had power to spare

Ah, wha…