by dizzilymerry
“The girl knew not how to help herself and was crying, when the door opened again, and the little man appeared, and said, “What will you give me if I spin that straw into gold for you?”
“I have nothing left that I could give,” answered the girl.
“Then promise me, if you should become queen, to give me your first child.”
Making a date with fiction
Taking a break from reality
Sometimes its just to hard to face
So I’m making a date with fiction
Leavin’ this cold harsh world
Going to a land where the sun’s always shinin’
Getting away from the pain I feel
Yeah, I’m making a date with fiction
It’s late and I can’t sleep. I’m so tired, but sleep just doesn’t seem possible. This may seem odd, but I imagine that on nights like this you’d do the same as me. I’m tired of missing her. I’m tired of not understanding. I’m tired of miscommunication. Sleep won’t help. Sleep just creates a realm combining reality and fiction, where I need to live in the here-and-now. Tonight, like many a night, I will lay and think. It can take minutes. It can take hours, but I will lay here upon my pillow and plan my next move. At the moment, life is a carefully poised chess game, and I must plan my strategies. In this world however, it is not us to try and predict the future. As the song goes, “Que sera, sera. Whatever shall be, shall be. The future‘s not ours to see. Que sera sera.“
by berecca
I came back all wrong. I mean, the fact that I’m even talking is evidence of that.
But, the thing is, people don’t say I really came back wrong. Actually, when they see me and talk to me, they’re pretty relieved. Until I start feeling kind of…hungry. I guess that’s the word I could use for the feeling I get. According to other people like me - if they had any kind of higher thinking - I’m pretty strange.
No one’s quite figured it out yet, but some doctors say I changed so quickly, my brain didn’t have time to completely rot. So, great. I still have a good portion of my original brain power.
Phil Manning
It seems only natural that the Sideshow is beside the graveyard. It is cold and dark, a low mist clings to the light flickering unreliably from the front of the tent. Clay and mud stick to your boots as you walk between the graves, weighing down your feet. The entrance looms and feeble light draws you forward. A tent made from faded red leather that hangs limp and lifeless in the night. Dead leaves crunch underfoot as you walk over the threshold. The entrance room is lit by a solitary candle that flickers and fades. As you wait the silence is overwhelming and you take an involuntary step back.
‘Welcome to the Sideshow. You have come to see our wares.’
by Nina
Somehow I knew the world would end up like this. Buildings crashing down, the sky darkened and me sitting watching it all happen. I heard the screaming and yelling of the people trying to get clear of the mess. I just sat there observing it all happen, thinking that there is no point of scrambling and running from fate. It had plans for everyone. We all new this day would come.
by Leigh
“What do you remember?”
His voice cut through the silence, the silence that hung in the air like a ghost. Nothing moved for a while, no one spoke. It was like a curtain, the quiet, separating me from him, the real world from this, this place that I’m stuck in.
Where was I?
His question came again.
What do you remember?
“Nothing.” I said after a few moments.
(by -quantumleaps)
You are not a man, you’re a wolf and I’m your prey – cheeks flushed red with longing and passion. You lead me towards you, enticed by a familiar look: a starving artist, bohemian writer and underexposed photographer.
You strip down my walls and show me enough inside of yours to create a craving. Watery mouth, hairs standing up on end – all signals of the upcoming ideas. The last of my wall is torn down willingly, hungrily, eager for that touch. Your hands lead down my innermost subconscious armed with the perfect questions to reach the G-spot.
by mills
Her days started in the mute gray of early cold mornings and proceeded, to her eyes, dimly and dully through the gathering of dusk and into the darkness of night. Now and again, eating dinner on the laminate table in her little kitchen, she observed through the window above her steel sink a sunset that surprised her: if the sun was leaving, why hadn’t she seen it when it was there?
In the year since the accident, less and less had happened. After the bustle of the legal and funeral arrangements, the inquiries from previously-dormant friends and family, and the neighborhood renown, her life had drained itself of content. Only form remained: the skeletal form of days and nights, sleep and meals, bathing and dressing, cleaning and staring.
by lupialex
Aloreck watched as they pushed her down the walkway, her shoulders slumped in resignation. The Council had made up its mind long ago. The moment she was born, her fate had been sealed. Now, after eighteen years, her sentence was being carried out. He had fought long and hard against them. It had been the girl’s mother who convinced him not believe what the rest of their people thought. Unfortunately, he had failed. The humans truly believed all their misfortune was caused by this girl, and the Skyhearts, afraid of change, followed along, seeking any excuse to be rid of her.
As if sensing his gaze, she turned her head. Their eyes met, and for one brief moment there was a glimmer of hope in the girl’s eyes, but it vanished the moment he shook his head, just a tiny movement, barely registered.
One rarely realizes that a fire can live within a house for minuteshoursdays without being recognized. Perhaps the flames smolder within the walls, burning hot but not bright, hopping from fuel-source to fuel-source. It grows steadily and slowly before ripping forth into a raging blaze that consumes everything in its path. It demolishes, destroys, renders the timbers to ash and memories. Structures collapses and leave faded outlines in the sky; out of the corner of an eye it’s as if they are still there, standing tall.
And to think, you never even knew the fire had begun.
by Nina
It was cold. The fast winds stung as they blew against my face. Goosebumps formed across my bare arms. My eyes were watering.
I looked over at my little brother. He was wearing his favorite hat, which had goggles attached to the top. He only had a light t-shirt and a pair of kaki shorts on. He was shivering. I didn’t know what to do. We ran away. That was are final decision. He was mean to us. My father hurt us. We had to run.
The dark streets filled me with sorrow. We could have had a great life playing here. Instead, we are leaving it forever.
I am hiding beneath a pew, breathing in thick motes of dust. I want to cough; my lungs burn with the effort it takes to stay silent. I scratch at my wrist. A pair of black boots passes close to my head. They are shiny enough to reflect my face: My eyes are wide and rimmed in red. I am so tired.
“Come out, come out, little boy…”
I am so tired.
The clock begins to sound, one gong after the other, the striking of each hour making the floor shake harder than the pounding of the soldier’s boots. Jackboots, I think. Is this how they felt, the Jews, the cripples? A bead of cold sweat slides over my forehead. The clock strikes ten. I blink, slowly.
“Are you not here, unholy beast? Could you not pass over the threshold?”
Eleven. Twelve. In my head I see the clock tower, see the heavy iron cross that sits at the top. I imagine it without the red ribbon.
“You are here!”
I cannot help it—I wince. I wonder if he can smell my fear. I wonder if they all can. How do they find us? Beneath the plastic of their masks, between the folds of their red coats, tucked into the shafts of their tall black boots, do they hide magic, mirrors and smoke? Do they have the noses of dogs? Do they have cat eyes? Are they animals, or men?
I swallow the fear with the dust. I cannot give myself away, not when it has been so long: Thirty seven days and twelve hours. I have been running for thirty seven days and twelve hours. I will not be caught.
I see the man, three pews over; see the hem of his red coat as he bends down to look beneath a pew. I gasp soundlessly. A cloud of dust climbs up my nostrils and into the cavern of my throat. It takes me by surprise: I cough. The stiff fabric of the man’s coat does not sway as he jerks to a halt. He is like a statue, a stone gargoyle. I imagine long claws digging into the wood of the pew. I imagine ropes of saliva dangling from gaping jaws lined with sharp teeth.
These images come to me in the space of a second. Before the man can spring to his feet I am rolling out from beneath my pew and scrambling up.
“I see you!” he screams, and I stumble slightly, my bare feet catching on some invisible flaw in the floor of the church. Do not look behind.
The pews sit still and resolute. The church is dark and calm and I wonder if God is watching and if he can see me running. I wonder if he knows about me. I wonder if he agrees with the Tide, if he hates me, if he smiles grimly when my hip catches the corner of a pew and I fall sideways. Does he lick his lips in satisfaction when my head cracks against one of the stone tiles that make up the floor? Is it his will that guides the black-gloved hands that catch me by the scruff of the neck when I try to climb to my feet?
“Filth,” hisses the soldier, and I close my aching eyes. He shakes me, screaming.
“You do not sleep! Wake, you little demon! Speak!”
I open my eyes to stare up into his masked face: Round, rouged cheeks, smooth ceramic skin the color of cream, perfect pink lips, and black netting in oval eye-sockets. It is an angel’s face without the romance. It is coldly perfect, unapologetically inhuman. Its empty eyes see me for what I am: abomination.
“Where do you run to?” The voice is harsh, hideous. In the movies it would be a voice from Hell, not Heaven. “Who hides you?”
I do not answer. In my mouth are the tastes of dust and copper. Death and fear. On my tongue I hold the essence of thirty seven days of living as an Un. Unwanted, Unholy, Unlawful, Unfed. I am wrong. I am against the will of God. I must be destroyed. This is what the Tide would have me believe. This is what the man before me, with his hard, machine-made mask would have me believe. I want to break out of his hold. I want to spit in his face. But this is not a movie. I am not a hero.
The soldier of the Tide hurls me across the aisle, into the side of another pew. I cry out. I make to sit up but he looms over me.
“Why do you live?”
I stay beneath him, on my knees. I imagine that beneath the mask, his furious face is the color of tomatoes, of peppers, of roses. Fairy-tale objects that my mother would sometimes buy from stores. His voice is a roar. My heart races as I try to remember.
It was February. In the store there were bunches of flowers: roses and carnations and lilies. Some sat pre-arranged in pots, accompanied by balloons or containers of chocolate. Happy Valentine’s Day! That phrase was printed on everything. I chewed an apple and pushed the cart while my mother picked out vegetables for that night’s meal.
“Marcus,” she asked, snapping her fingers at me. She did that when she wanted to hold your attention while she thought of what to say to you. Sometimes she’d have her other hand on her hip. Other times she’d wag a finger at you. It looked like a dance move.
“Marcus, are you going to get some roses for that girl of yours?”
I ignored her and looked for somewhere to toss my apple core. Her snapping stopped. I heard the crinkle of plastic as she bagged several peppers and dropped them into the cart. Why weren’t there any garbage cans in the grocery store?
“Hello?” My mother pushed the cart out from beneath my elbow and I stumbled to stay standing.
I sighed. “What, Ma?”
“You’ve been mooning for a week. You gonna get the girl a gift?” she asked.
“What girl?” Did I sound nervous? I took the cart from her and steered it down the aisle, past organic juices and fruits. I dropped my apple core into a trash can that was sitting beside an abandoned table—one of those set ups where they lined up plastic sample cups and filled them with a new product—without pausing my pushing to try what looked like orange juice. I turned and crossed into onions and potatoes. Mama put a hand on my arm to get me to stop. She ripped off a new bag and glanced at the onions.
“Oh, ‘what girl?’ he asks,” she said, shaking her head, “Is that how it is, buddy? You’re seven, not seventeen? You can still get away with playing dumb?”
“Mama, there isn’t a girl.”
Stop asking. I want to say it each time I look back on this moment. They’ll hear you.
She bagged a large Vidalia and then sat it beside the peppers. She tsk-ed.
“O-kay, Jack. Whatever you say.”
I stared at her. “Ma, I’m serious. There isn’t.” My hands were shaking. I didn’t push the cart, though she was clearly ready to move on, standing there with her hands on her hips. My mother had a narrow waist, wide hips, and a full head of thick, dark hair that she often wore twisted up behind her head. She was a beautiful woman with warm brown eyes and skin the color of creamy coffee. She trusted me with everything but my love life. No mother trusted their children with that, then. The fear had set in. All of the mothers were asking their sons: Who’s the girl? They did not ask: Who?
“Marcus,” she says, half-laughing, “I’m sorry. I believe you. You don’t have to get so nervous.”
Nervous.
That’s what did it.
The laughter fell out of her eyes. I saw it happen. Her face drained of color and she gaped at me, her lips stretched pale and thin. I gritted my teeth.
“Ma,” I hissed, “Pull it together.”
“Marcus,” she whispered. “It’s not…”
It’s not you. It’s them. That’s what she wanted to say. I could see it in her face. But so could anyone else who bothered to look.
“I know. But stop. Someone will see.”
She nodded shakily and then stepped up beside me. Her palm was slightly damp when she took my hand in hers.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she said softly, her voice terribly sad.
I squeezed her fingers.
“I thought I would have more time,” I replied.
We fell silent, moving through the aisles, playing pretend. She asked me if I wanted any cookies, because she knew I loved them. I tried to smile when I told her no. She grabbed ground beef, and milk, and paper towels. She tried so hard to seem normal.
“Excuse me, but can you help me with something?”
The woman approached us in the cereal aisle. She was tall. She had short hair the color of steel and a sweet smile. My mother swallowed as she looked up at her.
“I don’t work here,” she said, trying to sound light.
It is at this moment of remembering that I try to recollect whether the woman’s eyes were really as empty as they are now in my mind. Did I know, then? I hear Jack in my mind; I see his dirt-smudged cheeks shift as he speaks. “They’ll find us all, eventually. We can’t hide who we are.”
“Oh, I know,” the woman answered. “I just wanted to ask whether your young man there had a girlfriend.”
My mother’s gaze sharpened. “I don’t see what business that is of yours,” she said. Her voice was cold. My heart ached.
The woman lifted her eyebrows. My mother gripped the cart with one white-knuckled hand. Silence hung between them, heavy and hard.
“I don’t have one,” I said. My voice sounded rusty. I cleared my throat.
“Oh?” The woman’s eyes were not empty now. They were savagely pleased. I flexed my fingers.
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“Marcus,” my mother said, “You don’t have to answer that. Let’s go.”
“I…” My voice shook. Realization was setting in. The woman was almost smiling. She knew. She knew.
“She’s right,” the woman said. “You don’t have to answer me. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
And she walked away. But it was too late.
Now, here, I am caught again, found out. I stare into another pair of empty eyes and feel the same cold fear. My mother is no longer with me. There is no one left to stand up for me. Somewhere, Jack waits for me, expecting food. None will come. I will not come. He will fall asleep, arms empty. I clench my fists.
The soldier is still screaming about abomination, about the will of God, about every law that I am violating by existing. He kicks out. An explosion of pain erupts from the spot where his boot meets my ribcage, and I scream.
“Silence! You do not scream, demons do not feel pain—“
I feel it, suddenly, finally: a white hot rage that starts in my stomach and climbs into my chest, up my throat. I lunge forward.
The man gives a strangled yell as I crash into his waist and send him falling backward. I climb on top of him, howling, furious. I tear his mask from his face. Beneath it there is nothing but a human face, just a man with small grey eyes and a slightly bulbous nose. For a moment, I feel a twinge of sympathy. But then I catch his gaze and hold it, and I see the hatred glazed with shock. And I punch that face as hard as I can.
He screams as his nose shatters beneath my burning, bony knuckles and I scream back, raking my nails over his broken face. I dig one of my thumbs into his eye sockets. He bucks beneath me. I fall against him, my cheek beside his. I sink my teeth into his ear and tug.
His shock has worn off entirely now. He pounds my side with his fist, trying to shove me off without separating his ear from his skull. Blood is filling my mouth. I am going cross-eyed with nausea and pain. The soldier is shouting Off! Off! But I will not let go, though I am nearly choking on the blood. Is this how the others have felt? The others who have died?
The Tide calls us Uns. We are no longer faggots, homos, or pussies. We are nothings. We are nobodies. We do not deserve to exist.
No one expected the Tide to spread so quickly. They looked the other way. They shook their heads and rolled their eyes until the flags began to crop up everywhere, until the fear turned people into traitors. The Tide called themselves holy, said that they were servants of God. It was like Hitler, Jack said, like the Nazis. One second all of the other countries were ignoring it, letting the desperate Germans rally, and then they were staring, open-mouthed, at genocide.
Jack, I think. It is Jack who is filled with anger, Jack who is open, Jack who had to run first. I have always been the quiet one, the passive one. I kept my identity hidden. I did not buy him roses.
I snake an arm up beneath the soldier’s coat, trying to weight him to the ground with my body. I punch him in the neck with my other fist as I feel for the sheath on his belt. He snatches at my arm and yanks, but it is too late: I have his knife in hand. I release his ear and wrap one hand around his throat. He punches me, hard, in the gut. I curl into myself and roll off of him. He dives after me.
It is almost too much of an effort to lift my arm high enough and put the necessary force behind the blow, but somehow, incredibly, I manage it. The blade meets the exposed skin of his throat and drives deep. His eyes widen. They are human for an instant. And then they are dead.
I crumple to the ground. Nothing moves but the blood that is draining steadily from the body of the solider. Red. The color of the Tide. Draining away.
Pain and exhaustion settle into my bones. They hold me there, on the church floor. I wonder again if God can see me, but I do not question his will. I think of Jack, his blue eyes, his hands, the skin at the base of his throat. I close my eyes and do not worry.
You see me now, Jack? I think. I believe it. If I die and arrive in Heaven, God will let me in.
by leymahoney
Ashley closed Mark’s door and in ten seconds had been through all of his draws. She pulled on a pair of jeans, a little baggy but otherwise alright. She then pulled on a long sleeved white shirt and threw a flannelette shirt on over it. She was transferring her belongings into her new jeans when her thoughts drifted to Mark.
‘Once again I find myself lying,’ Ashley said with a sigh. She didn’t usually travel with anyone, they mostly screamed when they saw a different coloured sky. It was the same with other species, not just humans. Ashley wished it could be like Doctor Who; a good group of friends would keep her entertained.
Author - Lenny Maybe
“When you stretch like that, the creases in your back look like the Atari logo,” I said to my boyfriend as he was walking out the bedroom door. He let out a half-laugh, a few seconds too late - the kind where they don’t think it’s funny but know that they’re meant to laugh - as he walked across the hall to the bathroom. I let my head fall back on the pillows and lay down again. Another morning where he had to get up and I didn’t. Another day in the life of the chronically unemployed. I was studying, and getting a government allowance to do so, so it wasn’t like I needed a job to pay the rent. But Daniel was studying too, and earning so much that it cut off his student allowance. And when holidays rolled around, I became the housewife. Sitting at home all day, cooking, cleaning, watching daytime TV and waiting for my man. It was entirely pre-WWII, and it was doing my head in.
Colvin’s story, Distasteful Old Friends, boasted a strong voice and a great concept. Congratulations, Colvin - $20 is on your way.
Everybody else, here is Colvin’s story in case you missed it:
Distasteful Old Friendsby colvin wilt
Maybe the hooded overcoat was overdoing it, but this was my rain-drenched evening by the blurred streetlamps of Oscuro Bridge; and I had opted, perhaps unconsciously, to suit up before I went to work this morning. I was probably hoping to appear incognito. I knew I was being tailed. I may have once again lost this sadistic game of elusion. I’ve been playing it since I was fourteen, when I didn’t know better and ran that razor through my wrist in my grandparents’ bathroom. It was a mess, but I survived. And the price of a waylaid suicide is? Right. A weepy, wimpy existence. A shadow pierced with spikes. A soul stitched together with the thread of contempt. I don’t know which is worse. Knowing in my heart that I should have died that night, or knowing in the further depths that I could never have a second chance at it. Go ahead. Laugh at me. I’m too chicken to try again.
Since this morning, I knew I was being watched, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they found me. Nobody could really evade the guys I was running away from. They have feral senses, indisputable and unrelenting. They have a sixth sense regarding people like me, and they can sniff us an ocean away. What good would running away do? How could optimism champion against a shatterproof despair?
Widower
No one ever accused the man of being impractical; in fact he was typically regarded as practical to a fault.
The years following my grandmother’s death led my grandfather to over indulge in his own brand of ridiculous and eccentric practicality. Having no car and a weekend job close to his house allowed me to bear witness to his peculiar lifestyle closer than any of my other relatives—a situation I was both pleased to fall into and miserable to participate in.
Of course the weeks and months following the funeral were marked with a strange and alien feeling. I was grieving, certainly, after just losing a woman I held very near and dear and the loss of her was visible and poignant; however, the truly unique qualities of the situation were exposed through my grandfather. I saw him in a way my previous two and some change decades had never prepared me for—my gruff and grim grandfather was actually human.
by whygrowup
So I want to write. Actually, I’ve always wanted to write. And I have a story. Wrong again, I’ve always had a story. The character? Doesn’t matter. Let’s just call him a boy.
What is the boy’s story? His story is very small- He is growing up. OK, that’s rather too small. So how long should it be? Should he grow up a few days or a few weeks or a few months in every story? Or should he just have a small story, rather than a future? Gross, right? We should all have a future, a bright one, so should our boy.
The elegant master peered out the window hopelessly once again. It had been two weeks, one day, three hours, and fourty minutes since he had last heard from his partner.
Morty, the leader of the ghostly Ecruteak gym had left town for “business” reasons. Falkner, always trusting the leader, thought nothing of the notice and nodded approvingly. He helped the blond pack his belongings and gave him one last loving hug before sending him off to accomplish his assignments.
by Tanvir Singh
‘HE’S ABOUT TO JUMP, SOMEONE STOP HIM!’ shouted Marko.
‘DON’T DO IT DAN, DON’T DO IT!’ added Joe to the already high level of pandemonium.
Despite everyone’s efforts, Dan still jumped out of the hatch. He was very close to being caught by Greg, but got out. He was very crazy, trying to fight the Annihilator by himself. You would need at least 20 ships to defeat such a formidable opponent.
But something strange happened; and the Annihilator exploded.
