Lenn struggled against currents of howling wind and driving rain so strong they felt like the spirits of speeding buses. Keeping the cat protected was almost too much for him. He tucked the arm cradling the cat further back like an American football playe…

There was no way Lenn could bring himself to stuff the cat into his backpack. Not only would it be uncomfortable, he didn't think it would be safe either. Unzipping his windbreaker, he docked the cat into the the crook of his arm. Then he slowly rezipped …

“Goddamned cat, you're like a living jump scare.” Lenn muttered.

The cat meowed plaintively, tail up in the air. Matted fur clung flatly to its body outlining a starved frame.

“Yeah, I don't like this weather much either.”

Cautiously, the cat padded fo…

He thumbed the keys upward so that they sprouted beyond his knuckles like metal spikes. Should he retread his steps back into the driving rain and try a different cross street or move through the alley that might house something in it? Straining his sense…

The wind gusted this way and that, sweeping the rain away before slamming it back at Lenn in huge wet slaps. His poncho scudded away from his numb fingers and nearly strangled him until he forced it back under control.

He walked uphill toward the commerc…

His shoes and pants were soaked. Cold, they stuck to clung to him like a heavy second skin. As he turned the corner, he stepped down into water that swallowed his shoe up past his ankle before he touched the sidewalk. Somehow it felt colder than his feel …

Someone screamed. Lenn paused for a moment. It was difficult to tell with the whine of the siren and the constant roar of the rain but he thought that whoever had screamed was only a block or two away. The urge to go see what was going on, and to help if …

Threading through the streets, past storefronts that still had power, Lenn kept one hand on his wallet and used the other to hold his poncho's hood closed. The rain had been hammering the city for five unrelenting days and it wasn't scheduled to let up fo…

Ken tapped the bottom of his beer bottle against the table. It made the satisfyingly hard knock that only happens when thick glass meets sturdy wood. Stefano leaned back and rested his arm along the top of the red leather booth.

"What's up?"

Ken mumble…

Max paced the room. His encounter with the doctor hadn't gone as well as he'd hoped and he was keyed up and on edge.

Soft moans from outside caused him to slow down and peek past a heavy curtain to the Asylum's grounds. Wind played the trees like harp st…

Story is marked as mature

As Max watched the doctor retrieve the metal crutches and struggled to push himself erect, he was struck by the man's utter strangeness. Everything from the utterly hairless head, to the intense blue eyes that conveyed a sinister omniscience, to the painf…

In the dark, the falling snow outside looked like ash. The flurries that spun around the ruddy polluted glass of the oil lamps became the warm colors of a shattered rainbow. They didn't have the inner brilliance of fireflies or the sinister playfulness of…

The house on the hill looked like an aged porn star. Enough work had been done to make it superficially attractive but the closer you got, the more you could see the lived in lines of time. Knowing windows watch relentlessly and people who have stared dee…

I hate running. The thought wasn't mine. Or at least it wasn't solely mine. The walls in my mind dividing the three of us were the thinnest of paper screens and unless we were very careful, even the lightest thought bled through. Careful didn't apply to…

Story is marked as mature

“No, I wouldn't say you're fat.” Trent said, his face pressed against my back. Despite the heat of the apartment, it was a welcome comforting warmth. “But both of us could stand to lose some weight.”

I stiffened. Now his face was too close. It was in my …

Story is marked as mature

“That was a warning shot, d-bee. Try anything funny and there won't be enough left of you worth burying.”

Burning trees cast the area in a sinister play of crimson against the night's shadows. The rippling light twisted the soldiers into gross parodies o…

Three strangers crouched around a small fire, warming their hands. Despite that earlier two of them had come to the third's aid, they were keenly aware they weren't friends but momentary allies; strangers linked by their strangeness. None of them were su…

The reeds outside swayed, swept by a breeze that I couldn't feel. The candles never wavered so it wasn't just me. The two mountains known locally as the Two Sisters stood high and dark against the star-filled night sky.

“Why do we still wait? It's dark e…

“Your dad doesn't want you hanging around here.” Me, I added silently.

A woman leaned over a white rail, pointing at choppy waves and shouted Shark.

Margot placed her palms on my kitchen counter and danced back and forth. “Yeah, I know. I don't see wh…

We marched with triumphant certainty to the chain linked fence's gate. Mark went first, stepping on to the latch and sliding up and over before dropping down to the other side.

“See, it's easy.”

My eyes fell on the No Trespassing sign and all of a sudde…

I had cut through Liddell Park on my way to my girlfriend's flat. It wasn't the first time I'd tried to save time this way. Above the rounded tops of the trees, the summer sky was filled with wispy clouds like a cotton ball being stretched thin across the…

The echo of my boots attracted the silent judgment of every deluded man in the Hall. Under their disapproving gaze, I was glad to be wearing armor. Well judgment could go both ways and while the Order held temporal power, I was now a peer to a different k…