Shadows drew into Astarlane like the finest of cloaks, draping her form and reducing her blade to a sliver of the deepest dusk. Each massive, raining blow from the khopesh rung against a edge that was no longer wholly in this universe, or even the next.

…

Astarlane was strangely calm. Yes, single combat almost never lasted more than a handful of seconds; yes, any mistake that she made now would almost certainly cost her life. And yet, as she pressed her attack, she allowed herself a grim smile. This one wa…

Sadie nodded at Gulmar, but her instincts were still fired. She turned - and threw herself backwards to avoid being hit by the wide sweep of a massive sickle-like weapon that she identified as a khopesh as she landed and rolled to avoid being trampled.

A…

When I try to picture a faultless face

I see smooth marble curving easily over defined musculature

The epitome of beauty, of strength

and I long to hold that perfect promise against my weathered features

But when my fingers reach that unmarred surface…

Complicated and stressful,

Every day is more than you can handle.

They show on your face,

All the thoughts you've come to hate.

Like a disease with no cure,

Controlling everything you do.

When the days end

And the dark descends,

You settle into your refu…

Tom woke up with a yawn: NINE O'CLOCK??

Seeing this, he went cuckoo. He quickly got dressed in a frantic dash, zoomed down the stairs, burst into the kitchen, gobbled up his breakfast, sprinted to school as fast as a cheetah and arrived just in time f…

They took their passages out. Secret subterranean extensions in the parking garage led them into the storm drain system, then up the drainpipe, down the fire escape, across the building, and safely conveyed them to their vehicles a few blocks away.

They …

Ass-whupped? Me? You should've seen Tiffany!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Stella trundled along the brook's edge, gazing behind her all the while when she could. The moon, the MOON! It was always there behind her, even when the brook changed directions like an eager puppy on its first trip to the park after a water-drinking con…

Polishing her well-fingered nails against a strip of garish colored sandpaper above the visor, Ossie tromped her best L'Oeil and went gangbusters, head for leather, on her hurtling passage of Rite. She would need no rite aid today!

Bucksnifter Lentilsgree…

Loping along the highway in a bustle of activity and a Winebagel Scampmaster, Ossiary Lefthook sprang bodily towards the Arkansas border, more or less staying upon the tarmacked line of road that went by the name of Interstate 83.2, or "The Tagliatelle Ba…

Gulmar vaulted over the rocks, and the orcs shouted some kind of activation rune. Tenever looked at Sadie, who nodded, and the wizard muttered something in Elven that made Eraeon glance sharply up -

The teleport formed them into a close circle around G…

A moment passed, for Matt Quyen, where he was uncertain if he had gone from standing to lying on his chest, about a story lower, with a few broken ribs and ringing in his ears, in one unbroken sequence, or if he had lain there for minutes or hours. His ve…

The rain trickles lightly down your umbrella

Your steps in perfect sync with the beats of my heart

Ah what a scene

Your perfect figure against this dismal landscape

Grey concrete pillars and abandoned stores

The depression of recession still apparent

Yet…

"He's just standing there. At the bar. Drinking. Shots. Shot after shot after shot."

Her companion nodded, dark glasses concealing blind eyes. "You're sure?"

"Yeah. I've never seen anyone drink so much milk."

They open the steel-walled box which contains the data. It's a red plastic object the rough size of a brick and shape of a Lego, with grey cable ports on the underside. One of them flips the drive upside-down in a single, fluid, motion that takes a fracti…

Story is marked as mature

Story is marked as mature

God how she hated the burden on her limbs

That muddied her air and scratched at her skin

She resented the effort it took to get up

And believed that intensity proved her weak (and f@%ed up)

+

But she told me this morning that now things have changed

Her …

Suspects entered the building at 10:19. We arrived twelve minutes later...

"It's locked!", said Matt Quyen as he gingerly tried the office doors.

"Move away from the glass," said the team leader, "We're going to smash it." The squad backed up as the cap…

I woke up flat on my belly, a rocky and uneven ground pushing uncomfortably into my stomach. My body was stiff and cold. Just out of reach was a familiar meat cleaver, its handle rising out of a puddle.

The world seemed to be two places, overlapping echo…

If there is a God above

If there’s a being filled with love

If there’s a master of my fate

If there’s a devil fueled with hate

If there’s a battle raging on

'Twixt angels and demons, eons long

If there’s a heaven and a hell

If there’s a coming judgement k…

I'm not sure when fun became a fight.

Tiny, temperamental typed letters, once my allies, took up sawn-off exclamation marks and loaded their cannon with blotted full-stops. They barred the way across the blank white battlefield with hyphens and ellipses …

Trinity Keane tallied up her advantages. There were few of them, given that she was being chased by the police, but she noticed one - they don't know about my eye. That meant the fog wouldn't work on her.

She veered expertly, avoiding obstacles marked i…

They found him on the doorstep of a cold and gray human establishment and thought that no, this child did not belong in such a place. This child was not human. He was like them, with energy quivering just below the surface.

They took him away, blanket …