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…

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 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 …

“Sure is coming down real hard.” Teeny returned the pot to the burner. “Glad I'm inside even if I am working a double.”

I nodded. It was a familiar story. Long before I had ever set foot inside the Hot Plate, Teeny's husband, Ralph, had been laid off fro…

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…

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…

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…

Underneath the floor, the adventure commences.

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

This wasn't our first date together but I still felt like I had to impress her. I was keenly aware that I wasn't very good looking and constantly reminded by my friends, not to mention the amused looks of strangers, that she was way out of my league. Mayb…

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 …

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?…

"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…

"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…

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…

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.

…

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…

Story is marked as mature

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…

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…

"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…

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…

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…

"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…

"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 …