Email:

I want you to know my feelings in detail, so I type them into a single message that may be long, but at least I have provided good communication of my wants and needs.

Texting:

I return your communication sometimes with a similarly long winded mes…

We moved lightly through the corridor, which eventually opened up in a larger space, pocked with deep pools of the evil liquid. We paused, scanning the room, then looked to each other. Without a word, we clasped hands.

We moved quickly but carefully acro…

"But you're a fairy Godmother!" screamed Cinderella before collapsing on her bed and sending a dozen birds tittering out of her window. She began to sob. It was all right there before her, the castle, the perfect life, the perfect husband, and just like t…

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…

The small creature jumped up on her shoulder, faintly glowing, perfectly poised with its chest slightly puffed out.

Oh, that was actually a neat idea! The girl picked up her phone and typed a few notes, before setting it down and returning to homework.

Sh…

Beckton leaned out sideways and pulled the gun into his shoulder in one movement. He placed a little nugget of his attention right between the two burning coals that seemed to serve as the creature's eyes and pulled the trigger. The gun shivered a little …

Transpacific diplomacy warming, like global climate.

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

This glass of liquid seems to weigh a ton. I about dislocated my shoulder trying to pick it up.

Why don't you give me some lighter fluid?

Boldly I fear, oh so boldly I stride,

For I dare to be frightened! I shan't be denied!

There are others who cower but meet with bad ends;

There are mothers with power, het up with a lens,

But the timid who bluster are rare, dear my friends.

I will strike…

I noticed a minute hesitation from Grace. Curious, I made eye contact.

There it was again - a blink, a crack in the normally flawless armour of the Janse-Lomberg household service. And again, as she looked away quickly. Too quickly.

"Cerian," I said, sl…

Ryle, who acting as spotter tonight, muttered something about the rising wind. He seemed utterly unconcerned about the situation. I nudged the crosshairs left.

The Minister lit his cigar and leaned on the balcony. Through the telescopic sight, I could al…

The knock came just after midnight. I’d been laying in bed listening to this old 80s band called the Cure when I heard it. A soft tapping, so faint that I almost missed it. Then it came again, louder and more insistent.

I rolled out of bed and saw a b…

Cicadas sang in the heat of the day. Mostly. But it was well past sundown and the night was far from silent. It overflowed with strange sounds, as if the darkened woods themselves were awake and agitated. It wasn't just the pulsing buzz of the cicadas e…

Five men stood around the pool of greasy black tar that used to be Zach Cho. Everything had happened so fast. Even with their suspicion, no one could have foreseen human flesh blackening and sagging like hot taffy. There weren't any bones or organs. All t…

Story is marked as mature

I twiddled my mustache. Simply because I had a mustache which was very twiddle-able. It curled in a way that laughed at gravity, without wax of any kind and no roustabout would be able to ever knock it askew.

I toweled the sweat from my brow like so many…

It's the heart; the best part. I saved it for you.

I protected it, made sure it stayed whole and as innocent and full of light as possible. I used it only to build you up, to raise you from the darkness. I used it to praise you and to welcome you with op…

The pile of rejects on the end of my desk grew with a haste I wasn't quite expecting. This was the first I looked down to see that sometime through the day it spilled down to the floor under my feet. Of course picking it all up meant I sat reading them ag…

Dave’s sister answered the phone with a cheery hello.

“I’ve talked to him,” Mara said, skipping the social niceties. “He’ll get in touch with you soon.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Jo asked. Belligerence was clearly a family trait.

“If he doesn’t, then he’…

Last Friday, I went to see my grandmother. Growing up I didn't find it funny that our name for her, Popo, was pronounced how some people say dad or grandfather.

Even though her hair was wispy and mostly gone and her speech was much more slurred, she stil…

She'd never seen Elora that upset before. Never worn one of the necklaces? She wasn't really much of a jewelry person. Elora knew that. This one was special.

She waited a few minutes before pulling out her phone.

"El, please, don't be like this. You can…

"What a pain." She pulled the scythe back out. Not a drop of blood on it, and not a mark left on his body. Not by her scythe, anyway.

Eris walked off. She'd become numb to death by now. Being there and collecting the soul was just part of the job.

A cou…

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…

They had taken the light. All lights everywhere were gone. First the stars winked out one by one. Then the Sun grew dark before vanishing. Without the Sun there was no moon. It was probably still out there in that deep darkness but we couldn't see it.

We…

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…