I want to stop feeling.

As much as I have become aware that humans are not machines, that there is an element to our existence that exceeds simple mechanical repetition, I have never more wanted to embrace the cold hard unfeeling metal and soulless drive …

Have you ever wanted to fly?

Well let me tell you how to jump.

The weightless and dragging feeling.

When will the wind catch?

Do I want a bird, plane or Aladdans carpet to catch me?

Which could save this moment?

I didn’t want to fall through air, but soar…

In the entrance hall of the building, Beckton stayed as flat as possible against the wall and risked a look out of the open doors.

It was chaos. Cars were on aflame, filling the otherwise overcast palette with fiery yellow and rich orange tones. He could…

Story is marked as mature

When he turned 100, the town wanted to honor his war effort and asked him what he wanted. “I want to see my Betty again” was his reply. With an outpouring of love, the statue of the woman in her young wartime years was built, just as he remembered her. Un…

He licks his lips in anticipation, ignoring the searing pain of his torn tongue and the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. Carefully he reaches forward with both hands and takes hold of the box, gripping the top four corners between his thumbs and foref…

Far from cities, streets or cars

In a dark and silent mood

Roger sees a thousand stars

Exit suddenly a wood;

Fireflies dance before his eyes

Light and bright like magic sparks:

You can see that Roger cries.

The box rests on a small, round table, perfectly centered on its rough surface. The man who purchased it stands across the room, leaning with one shoulder against the wall, staring at the box without really seeing it, lost in contemplation. Before him lie…

I wonder if I'm unwanted. Am I the problem? I've always tried to make things better but I feel like I'm trying to keep the heart beating on a dying Clydesdale. Substitute any other majestic animal you want. For me the Clydesdale carries mass and dignity i…

A glint of dark light. A pitch-black night sky, if you will, crisscrossed by dark galaxies, stars, constellations, darker even than black...

Nick awakens with a full-body shudder, and the monitor starts beeping furiously. A moment later, the pain hits h…

"Eve?...if ya ask me, God set 'er up fer failure."

"...bless 'er heart, but Eve never loved me. Well, she loved me like a person loves another, 'specially since there was so few of us. I suspect she was...more of a fella', in the romance department."

"M…

She came to him in a dream, like she always did. She was assigned to him and the dream state was the quickest avenue of communication between realms. She didn't usually have any sort of proper message for him, she was just there to, essentially, comfort h…

He aligned the glyphs in his head in a manner that he thought made sense. He drew them out onto a piece of paper and realized that they didn't.

He had been having trouble deciphering this language for months. Being the head of linguistics for the univers…

She was startled to notice they weren't icicles but tears. The Ice Queen didn't understand this emotion of "sadness." She'd certainly heard of it before, but she was quite certain she had never experienced it. Everyone said her heart was as cold as ice, b…

It was the smell of geraniums that called it to mind again after all these years. My kid had picked a handful for me. I got a whiff of them and the years peeled back.

I had to water the garden, and I loved the geraniums best. I sang to them, I read them…

"She'll call." My girlfriend patted my shoulder comfortingly.

"No, she won't. She's stubborn like that; Taurus and all." I stared down at the blank screen of my cell phone.

"Well if she doesn't, forget her."

"Forget her!? She was the only person who di…

Beckton was waving a pair of troopers up to a delivery van that was missing most of its roof when he saw Osterley leap out from behind it and hare off up the street.

"What's that girl doing, sir?"

"That girl is Agent Osterley, Private Grouse. With me,…

I'm such a loser.

There are a million excuses for not doing what I know I should do. Still, I don't do it.

I avoid it until the guilt is so heavy on my heart that I have to alleviate the pain. I have to stop not doing it and face it and just do it.

I…

In another city, on the other side of the world and two weeks after Larry's unfortunate disappearance, CIA Special Agent Peter Irving put on his dropsuit. The dropsuit bore a striking resemblance to matte-black scuba gear, which was no accident - in fact,…

Tom looked around, but did not see anyone.

The voice said "Tom, enter the building in front of you and walk upstairs and to apartment 509." Tom did so.

"There is a large cardboard box sitting right before the apartment door", continued the voice. "I wa…

After the Shadowed Valley, at the foothills of Mount Piru, I first saw the Ten Thousand Stares.

That is the literal translation. It is in fact a staircase, older than memory. Starkly simple yet curiously elegant grey slabs of stone, with matching baniste…

Without confidence, I judged that it was my second day on the stair, and I was running low on food and water. Many of my supplies were sinking somewhere down in the valley mires. I shuddered at the memory of my escape.

When the twilit grey dulled, I rest…

He sat in his car, parked in front of a small white house in Podunk, Florida. He had never been here before but he had been assured by the clerk at the sole convenience store on the edge of town that this was the house occupied by the woman who had just w…

Osterley approached Newkirk as he placed a sheet of waxed canvas on the floor and unscrewed the cap from a small metal cylinder. She didn't say anything, but smoothed out her skirts and knelt down with him.

The wizard handed her the canister, which she …

The spell took them to a much larger, high-ceilinged room. Beckton could instantly see that they had travelled some distance - they had left a cloudless day for a blustery one, and the air was charged with a stormy potential.

Further along from the circl…