Smoky morning eyes made the light blur,

but I knew where I was.

I was home.

I woke just before she left,

just before she came to gently shake me

to tell me goodbye and

that she loved me

and that she'd be back in the evening.

The holes in my socks and ne…

"Your Majesty, let me help you out of this predicament!" I begged the Queen, who just a few months ago had been sitting on a throne of gold and ink. To see her now, scarred and gasping for air, lying in a heap on the prison floor was almost too much for m…

A spark of green faelight flitted through the nursery window as the last rays of day faded from the sky. At its a center a faerie, no bigger than a single mote of dust. It flew around the room once, twice, three times, before finally settling on the edge …

Its face was playing tricks on me.

It has been 7 years floating inside this heap. Sometimes I forget that it isn't really a face. It's a control panel. The dials, however... & the read outs? They are definitely face like. It's not just some goofy "space …

Story is marked as mature

Provoking dreams, you’re welcome at my door

To enter, and to make yourself at home

The myriad uses of this ballroom floor

Can serve each purpose, rather like a tome

Of tales and poems, redolent of dreams.

Oh, we can dance there, never doubt it’s true!

Bu…

I could hear her calling me back, using her alluring tone. When I didn't follow, she began calling me names. Every man in the entire place suddenly felt compelled to shout and call me names. Through the phone, Sasha could hear the deep rumbles of the men.…

The elevator stopped. Between floors. The doors remained firmly shut. Gregor groaned. He pushed the help button, but nothing happened.

"Are you here for the convention?" asked a smiling man in a lime green chef's uniform.

"No," growled Gregor.

"Seems w…

I stare at the picture a few seconds longer. Anyone else would just think it's another ghetto teen couple in cheap Hawaiin garb in the middle of a dirty city.

A grin spreads across my face. She's hideous in her coconut bra and grass skirt.

He's lost all…

In the middle of the night the world ended. It was actually quite mediocre. Unfortunately I was too drugged up to notice much, except one second I was lying on my hospital bed and the next I was under the wreckage of the hospital.

"Can we leave?"

"Not until after"

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

She came home and began to write by the light of a candle:

When it started, my forced adulthood, I chose solitude after a childhood of endless interruptions of privacy; we were abandoned by Father and death took Mother away. As soon as I could find a way,…

She took to the baby. Held it, rocked it, cooed at it. I gave her the supplies I had, but they would only last a week. I told her that the baby had to go to the hospital inside the caldera. I told her it was temporary, but I knew she'd make it permanent.

…

Inspiration sought

but just for a thought

a snippet of something to say

Longs' been the time

when my heart penned a rhyme

emotions inspiring some prose

A muse just to bring

to light a small thing

that awakens creativities flow

when quite so suddenly

I …

I bury him in a shoebox at 4:15. I scrape at the ground in the shadow of the fire escape with the spoon I'd saved for this purpose. I excavate, chunks of dirt piling. I crush each between my thumb and forefinger in a burst of dust. At this hour, this st…

Tonia saw the tiny robotic bug skitter underneath the sealed metal door and into the Writing Room. Xe knew that there remained less than a minute before the fuse it carried would reach the bomb and tear the room to flinders, and Grace along with it. Tonia…

The girl was flipping through her notes on her phone one day when she found the words she'd jotted down months earlier. She remembered that little story she'd wanted to write. The details weren't all there, but some of them were.

She got up and went to si…

Despite the term safety, safety glass still stings when shards of it hit you. I wished I had my duster to protect me, but it was in a crate labeled with my name and new inmate number. Before the last bits had rained down on the floor, a familiar voice boo…

The smoke merchants pace along the streets of the Market. The cowls of their grey cloaks are pulled up over their heads, obscuring their features. Everyone who comes to the Market maintains a level of anonymity, but the smoke merchants even more so. The p…

Malika felt no joy at the destruction she had wrought, only a grim satisfaction. She had spent enough of her anger to bring it back under control, and in the process she had cleared much of the surrounding forest of the evil that had once lived here. It w…

Alcohol.

Water.

Lime.

Salt.

The mixture looked like diluted blood.

It tasted like flat soda mixed with antiseptic.

It burned.

Every chewed fingernail, every crack in those dry lips, the bloodshot eyes, the sleep deprived mind, all burned.

He was split be…

Unapologetically together,

seeming like we're teeming with

something you'll never know.

Seeping with tingly feeling,

I am not ashamed.

Sometimes almost instinctually

jealous.

Green and calloused...

your face.

Are you sick?

You should be ashamed.

Others' h…

Orthael breathed out evenly, nodding. He had known, rationally, the moment that Varreniel's Candle had snuffed out. But it was another thing entirely to hear that it confirmed, that all the wards and defenses of a cathedral of the Flame had failed against…

Glowing green magic flowed out of the green-haired girl and into the rocks, lighting up the etched runes.

Pain shot through her body, and she let out a high-pitched scream. It hurt more than losing the limbs in the first place. She grabbed the bed sheet w…

A grisly, grating moan spread across the warrior tribe as they discovered their kin at the shrine.

They heard still the beyond's war drum beating across their hearts, and they thrashed like raging bulls in grief.

Michael's spell ceased stasis; the red…