As water flowed, it washed me all away:

The elements that made me what I am;

My hopes and visions, first. Behind them swam

Awareness, leaking ’til there’s no today

My pride in my accomplishments went next;

My puns, non-sequiturs–my treasured words.

Rel…

Malika was silent for a time, regathering her composure. She was embarrassed by her reaction, especially in front of this man. Finally, she nodded solemnly.

"The Archbishop is gone, as you presume, holy man," she said, "as is everyone else I ever knew. T…

Two more minutes and she would be free. It had been fifty-eight minutes since Rosa had trapped herself in the hourglass. Like much of her magic, it had been an accident. Spells were tricky like that. Intent and annoyingly detailed description had to match…

What is that truck doing?

The truck was large. The flat bed had fabricated wooden sides. It backed up to the barn, and in full daylight, no less! Surely, my late father would not have allowed strangers to traipse onto his property. Since it was mine n…

The flash of… cameras? Visual capture devices, brighter than the lean lines of the universe speeding past in technicolor. The roar of voices like the atmosphere, vivid, orange, and angry.

Amplification.

Alien.

“My name is Champion-”

Human. Translat…

Story is marked as mature

I stared at the blinking cursor on my screen. Like a tapping fingernail upon a counter top I felt it impatiently waiting for me to use it.

"I can't take this silence. You wanna listen to some music?" Daniel reached for his phone, eager to oblige my whims…

Dinner was terse.

Another Tuesday night, another dinner hosted by my parents. Generally, I looked forward to our Tuesday nights. My parents were both good cooks. I loved both of them, though it took me a long time to grow up and appreciate them.

Financi…

One of the hardest lessons I've learned is that some things you can control, and some things you can't. With that lesson came the realization that accepting what you can and cannot control will make you happier.

For example, I cannot control the attitude…

The train station and my exit from it was all a blur. Signs, taxis, trucks, people in military uniform, all bustled, honked, and swerved off in a great hurry. With my suitcase handle gripped tightly, my feet wandered, senses overloaded, until I found mys…

There is no Christmas morning planned this year.

We might not even see a Halloween.

The doom-predictions' date will soon be here,

And our defenseless bones will be picked clean.

.

We can see the waters rising, see the waves;.

They claw and grope and maul …

Everyone, at some time, has played the "What if I were immortal?" game. Pondering how it would be to see loved ones grow old and die, or how it would be to live through history being made.

Well, I am immortal. And I don't mean Highlander movies immor…

There are comedies, there are tragedies, and there is Fate - who enjoys a laugh as much as the next man, and has a lot more power to make it happen.

That, and a sort of quiet fuming, was what was on my mind when I stepped out onto the glass concourse. I …

Streaking down from the heavens, long tailed comets signaled the end of everything. Tears of blazing light marring the inscrutable face of the sky. Were we ready? It was stupid of me to think about such things now, when it was too late to matter, but I co…

The first day I saw it, it was just a little spot. Right over my left ring-finger knuckle. I thought maybe I had not washed well, or I got some ink on it from work.

The next morning my whole knuckle was green and looking a little fuzzy. I considered a tr…

The creature cautiously waited. The embers sizzled warmly. The creature sat upon the rock it had been using as a pillow and it almost felt like there was a hum inside. A beating held deep under layers of long-cooled magma.

Did it dare light itself again?…

Underneath the floor, the adventure commences.

..............................

He resists the voices, even as they wrap around him. He fights but is soon overwhelmed. There are simply too many of them. He feels them clawing at his mind, dragging at his psyche, pulling him down into unknown depths -- and suddenly he is very afraid.

…

There was a time I dreamed of you

Just a smile and a hug

You sat near me, close

Never will that dream be real

.

I let it go when I said

That I approved

Permission granted for you to move on

.

Away you flew, so fast

So far, the distance grew

With every hea…

I was supposed to feed the wallabies.

Oh, I remembered about an hour later.

It was a slight the wallabies would not forget nor forgive.

I'm convinced they keep a list in their head of each person or creature that slights them in the smallest of degrees…

The flutes surrounded me in a way that, despite ideas of reality and sanity, made complete sense. Notes fluctuated, voices trialed in and out, distanced claps, all-enveloping smiles. It worked in the same sense drowning in a pool solves every problem you …

One night, when I was nine years old, my parents and I were working on packing things into our cart. Then we heard screaming, and saw fire, and smoke.

"Noleka, get down!" my mom hissed, shoving me under the cart.

I couldn't do anything but watch as three …

"I have a hard time trusting people. I just don't want to jump unless someone's there to catch me," I texted.

I waited, the confession making my palms sweat. My phone did not slip from my hands, however. I watched the text box for a response. My heart cr…

It's always sad when you lose a loved one. More so if you're there when it happens. And the how doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter if they're suddenly struck down by a heart attack, or spend years wasting away from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The los…

"You're dead."

The bishop nods sadly at me and swigs his pint. "Sorry about that," he says, "I held on as long as I could."

"I had hoped for more," I say, unable to keep the anger and disappointment out of my voice. I had hoped for more, but cancer ha…