She turned around and saw the stars. It was a carpet of deep velvet with pinpricks of beautiful light shining above her head. The only sounds were some night birds and the slow ticking of the engine of the car as it cooled down.

This is the place she ca…

"Whatever happened to that 20 minutes of decluttering thing you used to do?"

"I gave it up when you signed me up for hot yoga. The class time overlaps with decluttering by 15 minutes, and who can get anything done in 5 minutes?"

"Very funny." She moved…

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…

Story is marked as mature

"Sophie Claire, my darling, you were always bereft of deliverance," he said, as he took the last drag off her cigarette before extinguishing the remaining embers of redemption. She tittered at his cheekiness. "Always a Tybalt!" Just be satisfied!" she wh…

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 …

In the fog, shapes are unclear. Shadows move in and out of wisps of gray; darker spaces undulate close and fade back into the swirls. My senses are alert, but every soft breeze sends panic down my spine. I close my eyes and put my hands out.

There is no…

A wolf I will claim

yet a dog I became

there was no other way to describe

I did all that you said

as your little pet

ignoring my pride

I lavished affection

at your beck and call begging

for your hand upon my furry hide

At the time I confess

that I love…

I don't sleep with the lights off, anymore.

A little over a year ago, I worked as night security at a psychiatric institute. There was one guy who would freak out if the lights were off. On nights when I was on my own doing a walk-around, I would stop by…

Reina browsed through the “curiosities” sure that everything in the store was junk. Wandering down an aisle between shaky-looking shelves, she heard the sound of a whisper, like a gentle shush or a snake sliding among tall grass but all she saw was an emp…

"Fetus said we could reboot his memories," I said sadly staring off in the direction of her body.

"If we can find his backups!" C:\ declared.

"I've never been to Acrylic's hideout," Hard Drive confessed.

"I have." I said quietly.

"Good! Start there!" C:\ …

I think I'm about to cut loose from these troublesome people

I need to take care of myself and prioritize myself and my mental health above others'

hard as that is

and did you know

that at some trying times

the heart will grow

and cross the bound'ry line…

NASA has predicted that in 15 minutes, the sun will have reached the red giant stage. While temps have already forced all humans underground for centuries, in this stage, the Earth will change orbit even more than it has in the last 100 years, and all li…

And pretty soon I, being a suave sort of kid, I said to the chick, I said, those aren't badgers, and she lets off slappin my thigh like it was henny bloody youngman, are you following? and smiling we took off the seatbelts and hung onto the hand straps an…

(Blame the rum). God damn, I dreamed that I swallowed a pin. And the point took my throat and my voice all at once. And I lay in my bed as my own brother hammered out my brains. And the blood made the walls the sweet colour of Autumn, and abuse, and ali…

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…

"It's only a scratch." She says, and she stumbles. We both know that's not true, since we both are aware of what a head wound can do.

She inspects him, and I know she's trying to find any claw marks or bites that punctured skin. If the mutants came into …

Story is marked as mature

She rolls over, the first rays of sunshine dawning in the room. There were flowers in the corner. Simple, blue things. The tye-die in the curtains sent 3, 4, Who knew how many colors blasting over the wall. Art.

She rolls over onto him. In those colors a…

He didn't say anything. Really, there wasn't much he could say, not then and certainly not now, standing in his doorway bare to the 3 am chill.

He stepped back into the apartment and lead the way to the kitchen, as if his visitor had forgotten, as if it…

“I'm tired.” she said.

Her words sent a jolt of recognition through me. Not just the words and their flat tone, but the familiar darkness they masked. It was so easy to rely on exhaustion as a crutch because it was so easy to be exhausted these days. Any…

She was getting used to running and climbing. Climb up. Find the light. Climb down. Run.

It was like System Management. It was easy. She could do this. What she couldn't do was understand the pain. It was this entirely new sensation and it was overwhel…

The world had disappeared. In the brightness, there was no longer light. In the sound, there was deafness, and in the heat, there was nothing to feel.

Had I lost myself?

I wished for the fog back. At least fear was something. I wished for the wall, some…

My heart exploded today

With a pain most exquisite

Like acne under digital pressure

>

The room was not large, and the softly beeping machines seemed to dominate it in ways that were all wrong. I fought against the drugs, knowing it would be the same old memories again, but it was useless. Just like all the struggles that had gone before.

…