He came around, blood dripping from a halo of dyed black hair, and the first thing his mother asked was if he had seen God. “Did you see him boy? Did you see our Holy Father? I bet he gave you a talking to!” she yelled over the sound of the siren. The ambulance hit a bump on the road, almost concealing the slight shake of his head that she didn’t notice. He tried to sit up but I gently pushed him down and told him to relax, while I redressed the bandages around his head. I watched his gaze travel to the landscape beyond the window glass that flashed between black and scorching red. His eyes seemed empty, hollow, like a dead man’s. He should be dead – that’s what a bullet to the head does, right? “You’re a fool, you deserve to go to hell for this,” his mother said. Her nervous eyes glanced back and forth and a silver cross hung from a chain around her neck. She began ruffling through the pages of the bible that she had wasted precious to run and get before letting the ambulance leave. Stray verses and words were mumbled to no one in particular. He didn’t look at her, or at me, or at the barely noticeable bloodstains in his black tee shirt. He just kept looking outside. “So what did God say to you? Did he give you a glimpse of Hell? Suicide is a holy sin, you know that,” the woman continued unceasingly. “Ma’am…” I said softly, but she ignored me. “You’ll end up in a gutter somewhere with no one but God one day, and you better hope he sees a prodigal son in you,” she said. His lips moved but no sound came out. He kept his eyes averted, straight out of that window. He tried again, and this time I held up a hand to quiet his mother, who finally took the hint that he had something to say. The first noise was a rough cough, but then words came, barely audible over the wail of the siren. “There is no God… no God,” he said. His mother, for the first time that night, appeared speechless, but only for a moment. “Of course there is, don’t be stupid.” “No.” He was more forceful the second time. “First there was pain, then darkness, but there was no God, no heavenly lights or flaming depths. There was only Death.” That time she was struck dumb for real. He took advantage and kept going, his voice getting stronger with each word. “I looked into the face of Death and saw him for who he is. There were no skulls or sickles, just… his eyes, they…” The boy broke off, unable to describe his vision, although his own eyes showed it all, even as they gazed beyond what the rest of us could see. Neither his mother nor I spoke until he went on. “He asked me the same question he asks every person who comes to him; why did I deserve a second chance? What made me so special? I told him I wanted to die, that I did this on purpose. He looked at me with those eyes and told me I had to learn to live before I could die, and he sent me back.” Silence filled the ambulance, and it took me several minutes to realize I had duties to perform, and quickly began running checks and applying fresh bandages. As I checked his blood pressure, he looked at me, and I saw that something had filled in those empty eyes. I knew it and he knew it; he was going to be okay.


Greetings, fellow writers. There are to be a few things introduced to this subreddit over the coming months. The first such thing is a "theme". This month's theme? Space Travel. If you've written something that involves space travel in the past, respond to this post with a link to it. If you write something new for the theme, respond to this post with that link as well. At the end of the month, this thread will be archived in the community wiki (an encyclopedia for the subreddit) for all future readers to digest. This will make it easier for them to find something for the mood they are in. Here is a sneak peak at what a few months will hold: - November 2013: Space Travel - December 2013: Winter - January 2013: Resolutions - February 2013: Time Travel As stated, however, only respond with links to space travel related short stories or serials you have begun. After February 2013, there will be no advanced warning on what the theme for the next month will be.


You are having a malady. This isn’t the first or the last, but you are having a malady. Your ailment may be any number of things. But you are having a malady. Put pressure on your joints and run a bath. There are a number of reasons why you might be sick, but rest assured we are aware of your injury and/or pain – use the toggle buttons to select the cause, because you are having a malady. Our team of doctors are on hand to help you out with your headache, cold, flu, deep depression, spiraling anxiety…you are having a malady. Stay calm. Pick up your medication, hopes, dreams, legs from across the room…you are having a malady. Our in-house strategy consultants ask that you stay calm and think about your childhood, unless that childhood was painful, then feel free to think about a comedy, song, or especially delicious sandwich. The point is, we are here for you, because you are having a malady. Avoid any urges to administer any drugs not prescribed to you; this includes alcohol and Children’s Tylenol. You are not to binge eat, cut yourself, or giggle at plants you think may be alive. You are not to bundle your problem up – there are a team of family technicians that will be on the way to help you adjust to your pain in the confines of your friends and family. They will be notified, because you are having a malady. If you haven’t called the proper authorities and medical professionals by now, we will now call them for you. Please use the drop-down menu to choose your malady. We will wait, because you are having a malady. If you have arrived here by mistake, please notify us using the Help icon at the top of this hologram. We would rather non-malady users to stay away from this site unless a malady occurs. Our service is free, and we’d like it to stay that way. If you still believe you are having a malady, please continue to hold and our holographic interface will continue to linger around your head. If your head is no longer intact, then speak “Missing Head” aloud and we will adjust the position of the hologram. If you are missing limbs, arms, hands, feet, etc. and need an adjustment, please speak the words “Disability” and our team of holographic assistants will assist you with your needs. If your malady is a mental ailment, please take a few minutes to make sure you are not hallucinating. It is quite possible this is all in your head… This malady.


I believe you may be sick in the head. There’s nothing wrong with that, don’t panic, because I know just the cure you need. Relax and breathe and try to stay calm, there has been millions like you, and we have done this millions of times before. You’ve been having strange thoughts lately, thoughts that no normal person would ever dream up. So I know that you are sick in the head, don’t worry, because I have the cure. Perhaps you don’t even think you are sick in the head, but trust me, I’m a certified professional, and you are as fucked up as they come. Please just take this pill. The medicine doesn’t seem to be working; we may have to put you on something stronger. Would you like to know the chemical you are ingesting? I don’t think that would be to your benefit. Besides, it’s not like you can even understand any of the things I’m going to tell you. All you need to know is that you are sick in the head. Sometimes no medicine can fix the ailment, in fact, think of it as more of a physical deformity of the brain. Something didn’t grow right and now all the wiring is off, but a quick poke here and a quick cut there should fix everything up. If you don’t think that you are sick in the head it’s only because you are sick in the head, relax and breathe because this will all be over soon. The surgery was a success! Tell me, do you still have unnatural thoughts and feelings? What do you think of your fellow man or authority or the government that takes such great care of you? Answer truthfully and promptly because I have reason to believe that you may be sick in the head.


“Dammit!” he dropped the hammer again. The fourth time on this little project of his. “Why the hell is my hand shaking?” “What do you mean, you’re hand’s shaking?” His wife called from the kitchen, only a room away in their one story fix-up. “My goddamned hand hasn’t stopped shaking for three days!” “That can’t be good. Maybe you should see a doctor.” “Dr. Wilson is going to be booked around this time of year!” “Well then we’ll take you to the hospital.” “I don’t need to go to no goddamned hospita- whoa!” He fell off the step ladder he was standing on.” “We’re going, and I’m driving.” She forced him into the car and drove him to the nearby hospital. She took him into the emergency room and sat him down. When they were called back, they explained to the doctor the strange shaking and him falling off the ladder, both of which were uncharacteristic of the then-45 year old who was not only sure-handed, but competent with tools and on ladders, having years of experience in construction. “We’re going to run some tests, you could have one of a few things, none of which bode well for you, Mr. Taylor.” ... They ran their tests, all the while, Mr. Taylor was insisting he was fine and called the entire testing process, “bullshit,” they tested on him for two days, compared his results with that of other patients with the disease he’d soon be diagnosed with, and then sent their data to his full time doctor, Dr. Wilson. He went in for his appointment and didn’t like what he heard. “Well, Mr. Taylor, it’s hard to say, but you’re exhibiting the initial symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease.” “I don’t care about Mr. Parkinson or his disease. He can keep it. What pill do I have to take to stop the damn shaking?” “I wish it was that simple, Grover, but we don’t really have a cure for Parkinson’s disease. We really don’t know that much about it. All we really know is how to diagnose it and how to extend the life of patients with it.” “What’re you saying? I’ve been with the rats in Vietnam. Hell, I’ve survived my mother-in-law’s cooking, some disease is going to get me?” “There are currently no known survivors of the disease,” “There’s also currently no known curators of the disease by the name of Grover Taylor,” “I’m going to recommend you to a specialist…” ... So they went to the specialist, they went up a chain if specialists, until they were enrolled in a first-of-its-kind study led by one of the nation's finest in the subject. There were 10 men in the study, all of which were much older than him, yet didn't have as extreme of cases as Grover. There were different "cures" that were disproved over the course of the study, but there also were treatments that stalled the disease's progress. Grover's case, however, was so rapidly adaptive and so aggressive that none of these stalling agents did well for long. In total, these obstacles may have added 4 years to his life, but it still got him, not before the study concluded, however. The study concluded in a presentation of his findings to an international committee of Neurologists. ... "As we can see in these brain scans taken 6 months apart over the past 7 years, the disease attacks through the muscles up to the nervous system. As to the origin, it is more likely than not genetic seeing as how each of the ten men studied came from similar ethnic backgrounds, but different environments. 7 of the 10 men were of English or Irish dissent, with the other three hailing from other backgrounds in Western Europe including Portugese and French. There were several factors that enhanced it; 9 of the ten men had served some form of military service, with the other serving as a Police officer. However, the extent and duration of their service varies. Further investigation into the matter would have to be pursued. There were various medicines that stalled its progress for a length of time. That length of time varied from patient to patient. Any questions?" There were no questions, just a handful of doctors scribbling notes down and the families of the patients watching horridly. the presentation concluded, and afterward Mrs. Taylor and her (adult) kids flagged down the doctor in charge of the study, Dr. Nussbauer "Doctor, how long does he have to live?" "Maybe 16, 18 months? But in all honesty, the quality of life would drop to such a point that it'd be crude to not pull the plug after 8." This was in January of 1994. With his first grandchild on the way, Grover was sure he only wanted to be alive for one last thing before they pulled the plug. ... "It's a girl, Mr. Taylor" "A girl?" His wife proclaimed with joy. They had waited for the gender of the baby, wanting a surprise, but each wanted a child the same gender as them. "Yes Mrs. Taylor, a girl." "What'll we name her, John?" "Sarah, like we discussed." He looked into her eyes, and knew it meant a last goodbye for his father, and he teared up. Three months later, they're in the car riding to Grover's hospital bed, just like John and his wife knew they'd do the moment Sarah was born. They were silent the whole car ride there, the occasional tear falling from John's eye. When they arrived, they knew it was for the last time. They walked slow to not wake the bundle that'd been keeping Mrs. Taylor up since she'd been home. Her hair was a mess, his shirt was tucked in only one place. They looked like they'd already been through hell. But their trip was just beginning. The elevator stopped at the 7th floor, the Terminal Ward, where all the incurables went. For the last time, they'd walk down the hall to Room 723, and open the unreasonably creaky door. They slowly walked in, being careful not to wake the baby. It was eventually useless because the next one in was Grover's wife, Mary. Grover's other two kids were the last to show up. "She's just waking up from her nap." A rare smile in the room, the rest look solemnly onto Grover. He's just waking up, trembling as usual. "Why so glum everyone?" He spoke in his slow, calculated manner everyone became accustomed to since the disease set in. "Do you want to see her?" John's wife Sheila asks. "Let me hold my granddaughter," Grover says quick and curtly. "Are you sure you can control yourself?" Mary says quietly "Let. Me. Hold. Her." "Let's surround the bed to be safe..." Sheila cautiously suggests. Everyone crowds Grover and for the first time in 9 years, he steadily extends his arms together. He holds her and gently sets her down on his chest and wraps his arms around her for support. Sarah looks at him and flashes the first of many toothless smiles anyone in the family will see from her. Sheila turns away, to full of tears of joy to continue watching. He cradles her in one arm and extends one finger from his other hand and begins to play with her. She grabs his finger with her entire fist and that's when Grover says, "I'm ready to go," He presses the call button on his remote and within 5 minutes, a nurse comes into his room "What'll it be?" "I'm ready to leave, miss." She consults her boss to know if he can do this, and after a while, she's ready to turn off his life support. They all say their last goodbyes. "Well, I'll be seeing you, Pop." John says, hands in his pockets. "Hopefully not too soon. Your mother deserves more than one grandkid," Everyone in the family chuckles. His other two kids, Sue and Debby say their goodbyes. The last to say farewell is Mary "For the first time since we've been married, I don't know what say," tears flowing down her face. With his shaky hands he grabs hers. "Well how about, 'I'll see you later?'" "You were always one with words..." She says it with a chuckle that doubles as her choking back her tears. "Well, I'll see you later too, honey. I'm off to eat a nice steak dinner." He drags his hand across his throat to signal, 'kill it,' and closes his eyes. the life support's rhythmic beep turns into one long hum. and everyone hangs their head in silence.


He looked at himself in the mirror, a thin smile stretched across his face. The smile seems forced and his face looks more like a mask. He closes his eyes for a brief moment before opening them and forcing a larger smile on his face. Still he was not satisfied with the man in the mirror. Why must you pretend to be happy? He ponders. He thinks back to when he was only a young boy when he was diagnosed with a rare heart condition that would ostracize him his entire life. He thinks back to the moment he turned to heroin to mend his frustrations and hurt. He thinks back to the moment when the doctors attached a permanent heart monitor onto his body, impeding him to even go out to the bars with his friends. He looks back in the mirror, no longer even smiling. Then he breaks into the most genuine and happiest smile he had ever seen. He felt strong and empowered, he felt invincible because in that moment he understood how truly unlimited he was. He thought of his friends as a young boy, how they stood by his side through it all. He thought of his two year sobriety medal, his personal proof of his own pure determination. And he thought of the nights when he snuck out to the bars with his friends against the doctor’s orders, those are the people he lives for and the nights he’d always remember. He looks in the mirror and gives himself a wink before shooting a photo commemorating this moment. He leaves the room with a smile on his face to attend the last surgery of his life. He was truly unlimited.


I never got lucky before. Never won anything. Used to buy the lotto tickets, every paycheck. Just $20 in scratchers. Anna in Accounting won a cool thousand my first week there. I played for 5 years and never once won. Course, Anna in Accounting is dead now. Same as everyone else. I spent the last month of the world in a cell. Oh, they didn’t call it a cell, they called it a research wing. The Red Death had already killed half the globe by that point. Asia was pretty much gone, North America was right behind them, and Europe was down to only 1 in 4 alive. 100% mortality rate, they said. No one could survive it, they said. Then there was me. I put on the mask as I prepare to leave. Gotta wear the mask. Maybe it’d be better if I left the city, but can’t leave the city, so gotta wear the mask. Sure, I was the Last Hope for Humanity, the One that Lived, or so the papers said, but doesn’t mean I can’t get sick. Just not the Plague. One in ten billion chance, apparently. I grab my shovel. The irony is, the Red Death started because some nutjob in Japan thought he had found the key to immorality. A retrovirus that would completely halt the natural aging process. And this nutjob? He decided that this was a gift to humanity, he didn’t want money or accolades, so he made the goddamn cure to age into a contagion, stuck himself with it, and took a flight. Tokyo to LAX. LAX to O’hare. O’hare to JFK. JFK to Heathrow. Heathrow to Charles DuGalle. Charles DuGalle to Moscow. Moscow to Dubai. He died in the terminal in Dubai, after having spent six hours walking around each of those airports, contagious as all hell, and all on the weekend before Christmas. “Fucker,” I mutter to no one as I shoe away some crows. They’re big bastards now. I’ve started calling them Crovus Rex. They don’t seem to mind me much, but they watch me. Read an article once, before the plague, about how damned smart crows were. Seems with us gone, they’ve been getting smarter. I hear them cawing at each other all the time. I think it might be language. Sometimes I think I can understand it. That one sound, a Caw with a harsh start and a slight lag at the end? Sort of a Kchraaaaw? I think that’s me. I wonder what they think of me. I grab my newest find and shove it into the wheelbarrow. Funny side effect of the Red Death? You don’t decay, bacteria don’t eat you anymore. You just bleed out and then sit there. Mummified. That bastard mummified the whole world. Except me, although he still kinda did. Everyone else died. Unless something kills me, I never will. No one could figure out why. Just a fluke of genetics that kept me ticking. The wheelbarrow’s heavy now. Time seems funny these days. Goes by so fast. Maybe it’s just because I’ve had so many days they blur together even while I’m living them. Either way, time to head out. I’m in New York, right now. Obviously. Well, maybe not. Dunno who I’m talking to these days. But I get out of the city, and then I walk a ways more. Been in New York for…for awhile. Couple hundred, maybe? Just about done here, though. Ahead of me stretch the Stones. I try to include a name when I can. Find it in wallets. Well, what’s left of them. It’s getting harder and harder as things decompose or get lost. If not, I put some details. Anything I can make out. “Wearing Red.” “Woman With Four Rings.” Anything, though it gets harder and harder to make it out each time. Still, I think I’ve got maybe a week or so left. Then I’ve buried the entire state of New York. Oh, I’m sure I missed some, and I’m sure the animals have eaten some. Some of the graves are no more than a fingerbone. But I keep digging. There isn’t anything else to do. Humanity may be dead, but it’s gotta be buried too. And I’ll be the Gravedigger.


For the sake of expediency let's assume you're not really crazy. You don't have a mental illness. The voices you're hearing and the outrageous emotions and anxiety you seem to spontaneously generate are not the result of a faulted brain or some past emotional trauma. Let's go so far as to assume that you've even worked out most of your personal issues with yourself and the world and are relatively comfortable with yourself. Or at least you were. Then one day, in your calm little mind space you noticed another voice. An exterior voice masquerading as your own thoughts, perhaps even playing off your own thoughts, but consistently chiseling at your esteem and self confidence. Being aware of this is important, but let's not make something that isn't there. Let's assume a lot here. Let's assume you went to doctors and you sought help. Let's assume that you've already listened to hundreds of opinions and perhaps even experimented with dozens of psychiatrics at the behest of learned practitioners in an attempt to reclaim the calm inner space you remember having. For whatever reason, no amount of consoling from loved ones and no amount of professional advice or meditation silences these extra voices. These constantly chiding and nagging and crippling voices, or the unexpected sudden instantaneous reversal of emotional feelings with what would appear to be no outside provocation. You can sit in silence and be laughing and in another ten minutes be bawling your eyes out all to the tune of whatever foreign orchestra is playing in your head. And because that's where it is, in your head, you can't ignore it. Like the radio in a neighbors apartment at three in the morning, there's nowhere to move your bed where there is a silent spot. A calm quiet place. The sound is all present, the mood all consuming. Your experience with medications have left you physically damaged, while on them tired, perhaps lagging. The expense and constant taking of a new thing to counter act the effect of the old thing you where taking has slowly accumulated to a meal of pills and liquids and regimens and for whatever reason, they still don't work. You begin to feel like a thirsty boy, now drowning when all that was asked for was a glass of water. So you ween yourself, and you quit the medications because they weren't helping anyway. Because even as tanked as you are they're still there. Perhaps even you enviously eye others, who having similar complaints as you seem to work fine on the medications. Their laughter and joyous good mood is crippling as you yourself barely made it out of bed today. But you know what that feels like, because you have felt that way before. So you know something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. And it is. Here is a record of my experiences and how I dealt with them. Your experience may vary.


A chill runs down my spine as I walk across the dew-covered lawn towards the place I hate most. Weaving through the gravestones, I reach my destination. I come here once a week; in all the years since Mother died, not a single Thursday has gone by in which I have not visited her grave. The thing is, I hate doing it. But now, I have more reason than ever to come here. It brings back painful memories; growing up during the Big War without a father was tough, but Mother and I always managed. We were happy, the two of us. The year Mother got sick was one of the worst of my life. I was only twelve. She spent most of her last days in the hospital; the times she was allowed to be at home, she spent in bed. While she was sick, I thought it must be impossible for me to feel more alone than I did. The day she died proved me wrong. I slowly kneel down in front of Mother’s tombstone. Clouds shift in the sky and the sun is brought out from its confines, rays of its warm light shining through the fog that covers the cemetery. I bow my head in a silent prayer, thinking about this place that brings me so much pain. Behind me, I hear the soft crunch of leaves. I don’t turn around, or even open my eyes; I know who it is, the one who interrupts my time with Mother. “You shouldn’t keep coming here,” She says softly. “It hurts you so much. Why do you keep returning?” I don’t answer immediately. I don’t want to face her. I know that that time will come, but I don’t want it to be now. “I have to come here,” I murmur, barely able to get the words out. “I miss her so much. I feel like she’s here with me when I spend time here. Like she knows I’m visiting her.” Jane sighs. My lovely Jane; I can tell she’s frustrated. “Peter, come home with me. You can’t stay here. You’ll go mad with grief.” Jane’s voice is weak; she sounds close to tears. The emotion in her voice nearly breaks me. The love I feel for Jane is insurmountable; it far exceeds that which I had felt for my mother. To hear such pain in her voice kills me a little inside. But I don’t turn to face her. “Leave me alone, Jane.” I say tersely. I hate speaking harshly to her, but this is becoming unbearable. “You shouldn’t even be here. You can’t be here.” Complete silence suffocates the gravesite. I am certain that Jane is crying by now, even though I cannot hear it. “Peter,” She whispers, her voice racked with sobs. “Please come home. I miss you so much.” Tears start to leak out of my eyes, despite me shutting them as tightly as I could. I try to control my heart rate, but it’s becoming more and more sporadic with every breath. “Jane,” I whisper. “I’m not going home. That house is empty. There’s no longer anything for me to live for.” “No,” She gasps, now sobbing more loudly. “Why on Earth would you say that, Peter?” “Mother is gone.” I say, finally turning to face my wife. “And now, my love… you are too.” Staring in the direction of Jane’s voice, I see only a withered gravestone. My wrinkled hands shake as they come up to pull at my shock of white hair; I fall to my knees and weep.


After years of being single, I was finally talking to somebody. Naturally, I was eager for any opportunity to see her. Chatting via Instant Message for a few days, there was finally an opportunity. She was free one night and wanted to hang. Awesome. But before that, there was just one small thing she needed help with. She had a pet frog. Keyword: HAD. Despite my love interest's tender love and care, the amphibian passed away 3 days prior. Poor little guy. But my love interest -- we'll call her Renee -- never got around to emptying the tank. She just didn't have the guts to reach in and throw it out. That being said, I didn't have to grab it out of the tank and give it a proper frog burial (or whatever), but *it would be nice*. Being the "aim to please" person I was, I accepted the challenge. The frog would be extracted from its home, laid to rest, then we'd continue the date from there. Awesome. I groomed myself, brushed and flossed, climbed into the van and sped off. Upon arriving at her apartment, we exchanged pleasantries, hugs, and all the stuff that young nervous people do when they like each other. But the pleasantries could only last so long. It was now time to head to the scene of the incident. She swung open the basement door and descended down the stairs. I followed, listening to lumber boards creak and squeak below as they bore the weight of my being. Uhh, by the way: if you're eating something, I'd either finish it or put it away. This next part is... unappetizing. The basement's carpet was vacuumed just minutes earlier. It was white with dark blue speckles every couple inches. Her computer desk had only a computer on it, her bookshelves held books and housed glass figurines. The bed was made squarely as an envelope. I was surprised by how meticulous and tidy Renee was about her apartment. Pleased by it, in fact. After taking in the tidy apartment's scenery, I turned my attention to the frog tank. The hard water stains at the top of the tank, the algae-green water, and the deceased frog had festered for three days, creating about six gallons of frog stew. Remember what I said about unappetizing? I approached the tank, staring directly into the cold eyes of our deceased friend. Before going in, protection was desperately needed. I asked Renee. Any rubber gloves? She searched mentally for a second... nope. Alright... vinyl gloves? Not at all. Gloves at all? No. Well, darn. It was starting to look like I'd have to plunge my bare hand into this toxic tank -- a thought that truly horrified me. Wait! Renee found a grocery bag! That'll do. I turned it inside-out, stuck my hand inside, and had a makeshift plastic-bag-glove -- like I was picking up dog poop. Now it was time to dispose of the body. Without hesitation, my hand started downward toward the deceased. Within seconds, the feeling of cold, stale water chilled my fingertips through the plastic bag. During this whole ordeal, my head was turned away from the tank. I couldn't see what was going on below. Feeling my submerged hand around the bottom, the tank's contents were becoming familiar to me. Gravel, corral, more gravel, a fish castle, then a stick. Finally, I felt the unmistakable bumpy, slippery texture of a dead frog. Here he is. My bagged hand immediately clasped itself around him. He immediately slipped out. Clearly, my grocery bag wasn't designed around a dead frog. I maneuvered my hand more carefully around him and lifted him out again, making it out of the water this time. But he slipped once more, did a belly-flop into the putrid water, then sunk back down into the gravel. Catching a dead frog was proving harder than catching a live one. Finally, I made an underhanded reach into the tank and extracted the frog once more. This time, he stayed in the palm of my hand. Frogs are usually green. However, when our amphibian friend passed away, he turned a rancid gray. By the way: know how frog legs taste like chicken? Well the dead frog smelled a lot like a rotten chicken. And felt like it, too. Boy, that little guy was slimy. I had a crushing realization: now what? I had planned (kinda) to extract the dead frog from the tank -- but made NO plans for anything after that. I eyed Renee, hoping she had the answer. Nothing. We began to panic. I proposed flushing him. Nope, that would clog the 'loo. Throw him in the kitchen trash? NO!!! The carcass lay in my hand like a hot potato, except cold and it smelled nowhere near as good as a potato. If we didn't act fast, we were both gonna vomit. Then, in a split-second, Renee rushed over to her sliding door and threw it open. I instantly dashed out with the carcass into the back yard. Luckily, there was an extensive woodsy area behind her apartment. With a deep breath, a crank of the arm, and a "HOOAH!", I sent the frog out a hundred yards or so to its final destination. And off in the distance, I heard an unmistakable *SHPLACK!!!* It sounded like throwing out a carton of curdled milk. Except bonier. And meatier. Rest in piece, little guy. Written by AndreaRCarr and submitted to reddit on 2013-DEC-16 Edit: typos. Misspellings.


The shuttle up is the worst. It’s boring and there is a long time to think about what you are doing, but this is all you want to do. Its what you came all the way to Gedern, Germany for. The tourism bus you are traveling in is silent, but your mind is buzzing. Buzzing with regret, second thoughts, but most of all adrenaline. It soars through your body even though you still have thirty minutes of travel to go. Your finger tips are tingling and you start to sweat. How can all these people be quiet when you are about to risk your life for something as a simple thrill? The regret spills over. Should I have brought more protection? Pads? Bubble wrap? Its too late now. Either go through with it, or wait two hours and take the shuttle back down. You look down at the board on the ground, and it takes you four years back. The eighth grade. It’s a Monday and you are walking home from school. You grab the trash can at the end on the driveway and you drag it begrudgingly up to the porch. Your brother was supposed to get it, but he was inside. He was in highschool, so he got there forty-five minutes before you. You stack the cans and walk up the steps to the door. There is a long package set up against it. Again, neglected by your older brother. Shouting as you walk in the door, “Why didn’t you let in the postman?!” His feet hit the ground hard as he sprints down the hallway barreling towards you. “Is my package here?” You try to toss it to him, but it was heavier than you expected. The package made a loud thud on the ground as it slipped out of your hand. He scoops it up unphased and runs to the kitchen to grab a knife. With a quick flick of the wrist the package is open and he slides out a deep brown longboard. “It’s a Landyachtz Evo” he says. “Do you want my old one?” your eyes light up and you shake your head yes. Of course you do. Its the only thing of his he won’t let you touch. His coveted old used longboard is finally yours, and yours alone, unbeknownst to you of the places it will take you, the people you will meet, and the thrill of eminent danger just a medium sized rock away. You get off the shuttle and you walk towards the top of the hill that you just spent an hour traveling via bus up. It’s only an eight mile hill, but it kept stopping for people to take photographs, and at least two bathroom breaks. You edge near the hill with your board in your arms. It is a steep drop off with smooth, flat pavement for miles out. The excitement and terror start building together in equal proportions. Articles of deaths from accidents flick through your mind at break-neck speeds. Peter Cernansky, age 18, died from a traumatic brain injury from a fall going fifteen miles an hour with a helmet. He was only going half the speed you will be, and had a few more years experience behind him. Your main concern is speed wobbles. Once they start, they are hard to pull out of, especially at 25-30 miles an hour. Speed wobbles, official name self-exciting oscillation, are S-waves that feed off of energy from your forward momentum. Energy stored in your tail gets expelled to the side. Too intense and you can lose control and be thrown off your board, which is exactly what happened to Peter. You start on the flat of the road in front of you, right before the drop. Heart racing, deep breathing, anxious. One foot on the back of your pintail. You kick it back and forth for a minute or two. Make sure it isn’t going to fall apart on you mid-ride. Extremely unlikely, but the nerves are getting to you. You click your nails together in habit. Well, what is left of your nails. You bit those off on the ride up. You consider for the last time, picking up your board and leaving. Forgetting the summers worked to save up. Forgetting your dreams of having the wind whip around your face as you reach 30 miles an hour. forgetting the 4,600 miles you traveled. It would be so easy to board that bus and leave, but you don’t. Foot back down, headphones in, weight shift over. You take the first kick off, and drop down onto the hill. “Faster and faster, until the thrill of speed, overcomes the fear of death” -Hunter S.


My eyes opened suddenly, my heart raced in my ears, a panic brought from the depths of a dream ending. Something was watching me, I felt it in that subhuman part of my brain that we all have, that animal instinct that told us of danger unseen. Something was watching from those dark recesses of my room, those corners that held shadow just so perfectly to invite the imagination to cast horrors unknowable. And so my heart races as my eyes scanned the room that I knew so well, the room that held me safe against all things. Eyes do not see entirely correctly when they are suddenly forced out of REM sleep and back into reality. Things are distorted, a haze that shrouds things for the briefest moments of time. They bring with them the fragments of dreams and force them into reality, but they aren’t quite there, so as I peered into the darkness that blanketed my room, I saw things that weren’t there. Yet something lay there, watching with eyes unseen. My heart raced still, drumming endlessly in my ears. What intention did it have, whatever it might be? My left over animal side knew of danger, but my human brain questioned. Did it want to watch me in my most vulnerable of moments, knowing that it could end me without a fight? Or did it want something worse? And then my eyes beheld something I wanted to believe came from the remainder of my dream, but I knew it was not. A grim visage indeed, the outline of a man that wasn’t a man, some dark mockery of our form cast in that forbidding gloom and I knew it was staring at me. The head was too pale, I saw as my eyes slowly began to adjust, and utterly without features except for two eyes and a mouth, though they weren’t quite right. They eyes were pits, swirling pools of void that drew in the darkness around it. The mouth opened, splitting decayed lips and revealing the same void that were its eyes. My ears were assaulted with the sound of rushing air and groaning metal, the sound of screams from every thing that ever existed, all pleading out for mercy that they would never receive from a master that didn’t know the concept. And then silence… All sound stopped, every background sound that our ears adjust to over the years of living in a time of constant noise, including the drumming of our own hearts and the rush of our blood, stopped. The true silence fell on my ears and threatened my mind with madness, maybe even more so than the sight of the thing before me. The darkness around the horror warped, distorted to conform to its shape, shimmering yet completely still at the same time like a ripple moving through the surface of calm water. The head moved in a way unnatural, like the still frames of a strobe light, one moment leaning left and the next right. Arms as pale as the head reached out toward me, and my fear grew a hundredfold, as razor wire, corroded by time and blood, seethed from the curve of the elbow and began crawling to cover them. They snake around those too pale arms and squeezed, bleeding that void made liquid from every inch, yet the blood refused to fall. Around the throat and across the torso it went, cutting deep to reveal not the fragility of a human form, but nothing. I pleaded with my mind to wake me, that this must be some dream. Nothing like this could exist in truth, for this was a creature born of horror and shadow. Yet as that thing stared at me, and as the silence pressed on me, I knew it was no dream, that this was real. Somehow, at that moment, I knew this thing was ancient, that it had existed all along the course of our short time on the planet. That this was the real reason we feared darkness, and begged for the light. The devil we fought against in every religion, the boogeyman we warned our children about, thinking it was some tradition that we all jokingly passed down. It was Hell, or The Abyss or the Inferno or Perdition, made real. I realized I had lain back down, having jumped with a start to my elbows when I’d awoken. How long had I been lying down again? It hovered above me; razor ripped false skin not dripping on me. A leg on each side of my torso, or was it floating above me? The head twitched back and forth and those eyes cast upon mine, and I knew death in that moment. I felt the loneliness of Ninth Circle of Hell, the cold of the void, and the agony of a wrathful god. It leaned down, ever closer, and I could smell it. The was the smell of the rotting flesh of one’s most beloved person, sulfur and frost, burning flesh and bile, rust and blood. My heart raced faster, and it pained me, a burning that spread too rapidly through my body, an agony that made me scream, but I found myself unable to open my mouth. Every inch of me begged to scream, and let my pain be known, but I found myself silent. I don’t know how long I have been like this, screaming in silent agony, freezing and burning and weeping no tears, begging for the end of this nightmare that could not be. A hundred thousand years passed, each second passing just a little too slow, and I felt every moment of it, and yet no time past. And I know that this will be my everything, forever. I’ve forgotten the warmth of another person’s touch, the embrace of a loved one, the feel of passionate lips on mine. The tastes of my favorite foods, the sound of my favorite band are all gone now. So too the feeling of a cool breeze at dusk on a hot day, even the simple joy of lying under a blanket in the depths of winter to read a book. My thoughts now are all the same, Let me die… A million billion years of suffering every second, and every second too slow every minute never becoming two. Let me die… Please…let me die… …end this. But it never does quite end…it is always going on and on, all of time spread before me each moment a suffering. I sometimes wonder, now, what the man I used to be was like. I can no longer remember if that man, so long ago, was a happy man with a good life, or if I was reviled by those around me. Was I a funny man, cracking jokes all the time and able to get a room of people laughing? Was I sad with the things that brought to bed that night, whenever that last night in my bed was? That horrible silence is always my answer, a harsh truth that makes my questions meaningless. Only those pits of swirling blackness matter, that soul destroying gaze. It knew me, far more than I knew myself, and every moment it chipped away at me, an endless march toward nonexistence, but the pain makes it seem preferable. I would join that nothingness in time, but not before every ounce of suffering could be pulled from me, and it was. …let me die. A plead that lingered unnoticed forever, an endless begging ignored. My eyes opened suddenly, my heart raced in my ears, a panic brought from the depths of a dream ending. I did not know what woke me, be it my brain ejecting me from a dream it was finished with, or simply being rested. I scanned the room; parting the veil of sleep to discover my room empty, save for the darkness and myself. Outside I heard a car door close, no doubt my neighbor getting home from a midnight shift at the convenience store down the road. Rolling over I reached out and found my phone, which I took and pressed the button on time to engage the too bright, too sudden light from the screen. The clock read five in the morning, but one would hardly know it. The sun hadn’t yet breached the horizon, nor did it show any signs of attempting it today. That dream, that hell of an existence, remained in fragments, the entirety destroyed like the surface of a mirror. Hours and coffee would see it gone for good, as the rest of the day would greet me to bring me back to my life, a normal life of working a job I neither enjoyed nor detested. I rolled from my bed, placing feet to warm fuzzy rug, and yawned. I found myself in the shower; warm beads of water beat down on my tensed muscles. I didn’t remember the act of getting in the shower, but I was thankful for the warmth. The news had said it would be another cold day, at best being as high as forty degrees Fahrenheit. My heater was broken in my car, and I still hadn’t gotten around to fixing it. The rush of cold air as I stepped outside brought the remembrance of that horrible dream in portion. I remember the feeling of floating through a cold too terrible to be real. I shook my head, trying to dispel it, it was only a dream. My jacket pulled tighter around my chest, I made my way to my car. My neighbor greeted me from his lawn as he retrieved his trash can from the curb, a gesture made and returned every day. Nothing was special about this day, only the remnants of that dream. I felt a smile cross my face, knowing that everything was okay. The sun shined down on my cold face, warming it for a moment, a perfectly normal yet sincere second of time that could exist only for those alive. The dead know not the feeling of warm sunshine, only cold dirt, and that was worth remembering. My eyes opened suddenly, my heart raced in my ears, a panic brought from the depths of a dream ending. The silence contained the world in perfect stillness, and my tormentor’s unforgiving eyes greeted my suffering again. I thought I saw a gleam of sadistic pleasure in there, somewhere, buried deep beneath the existing nothingness. A moment of sincere joy, the simple feeling of warmth from the sun, was given to me as hope. And it was taken from me, reminding me of my true fate. …let me die. I begged through silent eyes, for no scream could pass my lips. …let this be the end, I’ve suffered enough. …Finish this, please. Somehow I knew it would never end.


From up on high, the star walker sighed, the pebble-muncher cried and the ladybug died. After the fact, per se, there was no trace, not a shred of tangible evidence. No snippets, no whippets, no crickets, no documents, no monuments, no power plants, no sour ants, no bar fights, no car lights, no head lamps, no street tramps, no beat vans, no light bans, no sport fans, no frying pans, no lying dames, no crying shame and least of all… There was no darkness. Not a droplet in the stillness. An echo of an intelligent species. Intelligent. This Maker chuckled heartily at the thought, for this maker had found the time. But not the thyme, as this rhyme grows with the limes on the stone baked crust of the blue pebbles lust. Yes, sighed the maker, it was a lusty place. A musty, fusty faucet of leaking prosperity and mindless calamity. Ha! Another laugh rippled from the Makers velvet laughing-box. It was not as if he had not thought long and hard about his decision, there was many-a-millennium spent pondering the ponderous, reaching into the gaping chasm of thought to purge the answers from his Wisdomus Tooth . He was unlucky to only have one Wisdom Tooth and this was a maker who needed answers fast. One Tooth would not cut it, he needed more. Fast. Faster than one can say fasterousnessing. Speaking of thinking, this was something the sentients of the Blue Pebble always fell short of doing and was one of the reasons for their Un-Making. It was strange, to the maker, when he thought about it, thinking didn’t seem to be a very hard thing to do. See! However, considering the creatures had installed a very large, specific muscle that was positively perfect for the job. Not to mention its many other wonderful functions. Including, but not limited to; Thermoregulatory balance, balancing, fantasising, speaking, pain, emotion, devotion, muscle motion, brussel sprout poaching, skin packet roaching, tassle twisting, hassle causing, music making, language breaking, barrier bursting, astral dreaming and last but not least… Consciousness expanding. It was an elaborate experiment to say the least; the maker did not dream the species would flourish into something so robust and intricate. But alas, the experiment was doomed to fail. To fall out of the broken sky, crashing into the flame scorched darkness of waywardness and heavy-handed brutishness. Was this The Makers fault? Possibly. Maybe. Unscrupulously. Or was there something else at play here? Was there, by any chance another reason for this catastrophe? Certainly. But it was a truth hidden deep within the depths of the cognitive cogs of one particular humanoid. Yes, the muscle named their species ‘humans’, Silly, I know. Now, let me take you on a journey to the blue pebble. My creation, my craft, my spherical raft adrift in the swallowing blackness. Let us first walk 1,391,000… I think the humans called them kilometres (and yes, you could just as easily walk 4 Yoctoargons if you happen to hail from the reaches of the Thumpingbumpingtechnotown in sector C of the Rinneganitis area of Deep Space) around what they now call ‘The Sun.


Once upon a time, there lived a girl. She was a mousy looking girl who wore rags of grey and blue. Her peers liked to tease her because of that (and other things, too). She walked home alone, her only company the voices in her head, mocking her. They were loud, an obnoxious din, and certainly unwelcome. The girl could do nothing to make them go away. She didnt like the voices, though they were her only company. People often told her to perk up a little, but the girl couldnt, or maybe she just wouldnt. She couldnt understand why it was important for them to see her ''perk up''. They never noticed her, except sometimes to offer advice on how to be like them - perky and carefree. Sometimes the girl thought about why she felt so different from the society around her. Life for her was like being at a party she wasnt invited to, and she didnt know how she came to be at this party. The more the girl thought about this, the more she got lost amidst her thoughts. The only escape from this maze was to slash and cut her way out. The day she smiled was a special day indeed! In fact, on that particular day, she smiled three times. Once, when she woke up in the morning knowing it was her last. Twice, when nobody was there to barge in, and ruin it for her. Lastly, when they found her.


So I'm 16 and was assigned a short story assignmentin english to write about a "grotesque character". I was wondering if I could get feedback about anything you notice that could be improved or was overlooked when I edited or even just writing tips... thanks! ~1400 words I apologize for formatting... ** friend.** "*Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.*" – C.S. Lewis He trudged through the snow of the harsh Alaskan winter; the snow engulfed the ankles of his black snow boots and went up to his knees. The cold winter chill turned his nose and face red and was beginning to freeze the snow on his hat and gloves. Carrying animal pelts from his recent hunt, 28-year-old Bernard Helmholtz, a fur dealer, heads towards his home to prepare the pelts for sale. As he trudges along through the under the faint moonlit sky in the Alaskan night, he sees one other person in his entire 13-mile trek. The small town of Ketchikan, Alaska is home to several hundred inhabitants who all know Helmholtz as the man who sells pelts in the town. He is a reasonably tall man with shaggy black hair and an unkempt beard that doesn’t connect to his mustache. He has an athletic build with pale, hairy skin and even paler blue eyes. Helmholtz is a timid and quiet man, not only because he is mute, but because he lives alone. He lives in the hills on the outskirts of town and makes little contact with people with the exception of his monthly sales. Living in Ketchikan since birth, Helmholtz is familiar with most members of the town. The people of Ketchikan have little to do with him because no one is able to, or desires to, communicate with him. Helmholtz hasn’t been mute since birth, he stopped speaking in his later adolescent years from intense psychological trauma. Garrity Helmholtz, his father, was an alcoholic and abused Bernard for much of his childhood. Lashing out at Bernard for small offenses, Bernard is often reminded of his childhood by the scars from thick leather belts on his back and arms which he tries to keep hidden. By hiding his scars, he often hides himself. His mother divorced his father and left the family when he was young causing his father to spiral out of control in his own life and into control of Bernard’s life. Bernard never had friends and never received a formal education. The only person he was ever close to was his older half-brother, Winston, who taught him how to read and write as a child. One morning in Bernard’s childhood, his brother was teaching him in the dingy basement of their tiny house when their dad came down to get more whiskey. Garrity was adamantly against having Bernard become literate. Those were the last few minutes Bernard ever saw of his beloved brother. Garrity grabbed him by the collar and dragged him upstairs and all Bernard heard was Winston’s struggles and screams coming from the kitchen. The worst sound Bernard ever heard was the sound of his brother’s murder and watching the viscous blood dribble down the stairs scared him more than anything he would ever witness in his life. Bernard could tolerate his father’s rule with the accompaniment of his brother. When his brother was killed, so was Bernard’s ability to cope. Everyone he loved was gone. When he spoke he was hit. Garrity didn’t want his son to develop a personality so he couldn’t hurt him like his mother had. When he spoke he was punished and when he cried he was beaten. Bernard’s safety stemmed from his silence. The only form of salvation were the small dreams that he wrote down. His writing was how he kept his brother alive. It kept him sane. The dreams he had were the only way for him to escape his miserable existence. But even in his dreams his father was there – beating him. He physically and mentally curled up into a ball and was unable to express his desire for true human connection. What he wanted most in life was for his brother to come back and to forge a meaningful relationship with another human being. Years later, after his father’s death, the mental scarring from his childhood warped his perception of others. Everyone who became close to him either died or couldn’t handle his problems and left. There was no one and Bernard was on his own. As an adult he found a job and stayed in his tiny old home that set him far away from people. He wanted more than anything to be connected with people but the townspeople saw him as a freak. He lived on the outskirts of town and wouldn’t - couldn’t - properly communicate with them. The town doctors assumed he was sick in the head and left him alone. No one knew of his past and no one bothered to find out. Bernard still writes his dreams of being with people down on the little scraps of paper from sale receipts. He looks at them and weeps as he burns them into ashes. As he sits alone in his room he dreams of others. He hears voices. Voices of his mother, the screams of his brother, and the scolding of his father all continue to haunt him. He often looks out the window and sees a person passing only to open to the door to greet them when nothing is there. As he reaches his home in the midst of the night he sets the dead bodies of the animals in his freezer. He pulls one out and sets it on his cold, steel table. He uses the same knife his father used on his brother to gut the animals he hunts. For Bernard it is a release – a release of pent up aggression towards the man who warped his current psychological being. As he carves the animal open and removes the innards he hears a faint knocking at the door. He assumes he is hearing things again and nods his head as he continues to skillfully remove the skin from the animal. He hears a louder rapping at his door. He assumes it must be an animal so he grips his knife harder until his knuckles are white like the ivory handle of the knife. He walks to the door and opens it. Before him stands a girl – a petit young girl with wavy blond hair glistening in the yellow light of his porch lamp. He relaxes his grip and stares as if he is looking into her soul. Wearing his apron splattered with blood and holding a knife, the girl is visibly uncomfortable. She warily asks to use his phone. He nods and steps out of the way of the door and points her in the direction of the phone. She walks over to it and looks visibly distressed from the pungent odor of the animals and taste of fresh blood in the air. With Bernard still staring, she begins to dial the phone. She turns to him after a few minutes and asks if he has another phone because she doesn’t hear any sound. Bernard, awkward and uncomfortable in the presence of another person, shakes his head no from the other room. She asks to stay the night; it’s late and she doesn’t want to go back to town at night by herself. Bernard nods with approval. He puts his apron on the hook and directs her to the couch. He goes upstairs. After several hours pass and the girl is asleep, he puts his apron back on. He walks cautiously through the kitchen and grabs his knife off the table without shifting his eyes away from her. Cupping her mouth, he grabs her and brings her into the kitchen and down the basement stairs. He hurriedly grabs a rope and ties her to a supporting pole in the middle of the dark, chill room. He holds her head steady as he mutes her panicky screams with duct tape. He goes back upstairs and goes to sleep. When he returns the next morning he brings her food. He places the plate of undercooked meat and scrambled eggs in front of her and carefully peels off the tape. The smell of the eggs does little to mask the aroma of dry blood, death, and rust in the basement. She has the same empty look in her eyes that he had after hearing his brother killed.


"Why are you here?" She asked wearily. I thought I had come prepared to answer this, I knew I did but when she did actually ask me, I was lost for words. It wasn’t so much the nature of the question or the lack of an answer on my part. It was her. She looked so sad, her eyes void of hope and her voice fatigued. I felt responsible, I had taken this beautiful woman, the love of my life, and broken her piece by piece till she became a shadow of the person I fell in love with. When you fall in love, you never intend to hurt the person you care so much about. You would rather die than see them in any sort of pain. All you want to do is spend every waking second with them. I wanted to be her everything and she was everything I wanted. I never wanted to imagine a world without her. Slowly, but surely the magic wears off. Words and expressions become routine. You become comfortable and begin to take her for granted. The playful quarrels become hour-long screaming matches. Sometimes my actions became louder than my words. You can only take so much and I should’ve done better. I thought I was better than that. I resented who I had become and what I had done, but I always had hope. I just wanted her to forgive me, I wanted us to be us again. I wanted to make her happy and carry on like nothing had come in between us. She prompted me again, “Why are you here?” I saw her eyes tear up, every terrible decision I made or thing I said to her exploded through my head. That’s when I asked myself, what was I doing here? The hardest part of knowing that it was over between us was that no matter what I did, I could never make her feel like she did before. I was only causing her pain and this was a hard truth for me to swallow. I turned around to leave knowing that I would never see her again. I mustered the only three words I saw fit, “I am sorry.” Her face expressed more than her words ever would.


"What is it like?” he whispered, trying to calm himself. She sighed. “It is exactly what you think it would be like.” He was not sure if she would continue, given her extremely annoyed expression. He had no choice but to wait, nearly forgetting to breathe as he counted the seconds in his head. “I have often thought of how I would explain it to a human if one ever asked me. I have had millions of make-believe conversations in my head with frightened, scared, little know-it-alls such as yourself. When they realize its all true… the look on their face.. Its beautiful.” Her words were so fluid. She half smiled and her eyes filled with a sinister resentment for him. She again paused an awkward length of time before inhaling sharply and resuming her thought. “In those mock conversations, I always try to explain the difference between living one life...with one family, one schooling experience, one professional experience, and one death… and living hundreds. I have been every profession imaginable and I have been nearly every type of person as well.” She spoke slowly, with purpose, as if reading a script. She paced in front of him as she continued, “There were decades where I was kind and had a family. Decades were I was alone and dreamed of a better life. Decades were I was an explorer and traveled everywhere…” her voice had changed to a sweeter tone. He could tell she was remembering something, or someone. She was thinking about something other than him and he felt a second of relief. “I have quiet literally done it all and now, unfortunately for you, you humans tend to bore the shit out of me.” Her voice had reverted back to the harshness that first accompanied it. Upon hearing her last thought he quickly knew his stalling tactic was failing and scrambled his brain for a challenging question, an interesting thought...anything! She inched closer to him and her eyes were no longer looking into his. They turned a empty, midnight black; displayed his scared reflection. He shook his head in terror and cried every plea he could make until he suddenly blurted out, “What about love?!” She paused at his inquiry and smiled large and warmly. “Oh. You’re doing that cute thing that frightened humans do. You want to know me? You want to find out my secrets? You want me to share things with you, things that will make you important? Well, guess what.” Her eyes faded back to a radiant blue and her skin flushed with color. She looked… beautiful. And caring. She looked at him the way his grandmother would when he was younger. She looked so familiar he unintentionally relaxed. Even stopped crying. “You’re not.” His blood was drained from him faster than the warm feeling from her smile.


Typing is the easiest way I know to scream at the dark. Because you know it's out there, circling you. Never had much of a singing voice and there's always so many ears. Listening. Makes your own voice sound painful and ridiculous. Makes you sound small. So very small. But words. Type written words. Ink on page. It's like you're invincible. Once they're written down, they have been written. Something that can't just be taken away, something real, something that happened. An actual. Actually. And you huddle around them, these words, for warmth. Like a tiny fire lighting a tiny light in the middle of the deepest darkest woods. Maybe staring at the fire makes the shadows harder to see. Maybe if I stare long enough, I'll forget her. You'll forget her. It's why you do this you know. Reading and writing and listening to music and watching your shows, that's fucking why right there: Her. Desperately searching for some anecdote, some scene, some paragraph that will make you feel like you did the first time you noticed her. Really noticed her. Something that'll make your insides bubble up and take all those cold bitter years you thought you had and make you feel like some dumb school boy in love again, that's fucking why. And it's the damn truth and you know it. No amount of somebody else's words or even your own written hastily on some coffee house napkin about how cute you think she is in 4 lines or less, rhyming preferred because you want to be clever, with an ending that makes you seem mysterious, is going to change that. The fact that right now you're here reading this and not with HER, or whoever. That the truth is there are just these words. These words and the darkness.


Drip, drip, drip. The droplets fell into the pool. Blurp, blurp, blurp. Bubbles arose in the pool. "Hello, hello, hello?" One bubble spoke to the rest. Float, float, float, Said the other bubbles. "Am I the only one?" Said the bubble. Lap, lap, lap. A cat drank from the pool. "Can you hear me?" Cried the bubble. The cat stared, but continued its lapping. Grow, grow, grow. The bubble expanded. It enveloped the other bubbles, appropriating their precious air for its own use. Blink, blink, blink. The cat looked at the ever-growing bubble as it quickly became a large, low balloon on the water. Buzz, buzz, buzz. The bubble buzzed with its surface tension as it made its ascension known, offering a "Look!" and a "Do you hear me now?" to the cat. Reach, reach, reach. The cat extended a furry paw, cautiously as its nature would allow, toward the transparent mass. "No, no, no!" Cried the bubble as it receded back toward the middle of the puddle. Wide, wide, wide, drew the cat's eyes. Pop, pop, pop.


I like being barefoot in the cold. People always stare at me awkwardly, when I start peeling off my shoes and socks to walk across a frost-laden pitch of grass, but they wouldn’t if they just tried it. Society only tells you it’s not okay to go outside with shoes on. It’s actually an entirely novel concept, really; I’d rather focus on my feet freezing, than sit back idly as my night travels in reverse. I don’t think I sleep well anymore. I always feel tired; like the coffee I had last night, doesn’t want me to drink the coffee I’ll drink in the morning. And I’ll roll over in my bed, and that sting of the familiar pain in my side shakes me so hard I can’t go back to sleep. And the feeling of my heart, almost burning, with every few beats, scares me enough to get out of bed and drink some water. I’ll go outside, instead of having coffee, in an attempt to offset the ritual that lead to my dismay. Walking barefoot into the yard while I’m smoking, just to let my mind travel somewhere else for a while. And then I stepped on that fucking dart. The serenity of chills is met with the sound of anguish, and my scream pierces the early morning, and I’m left wondering why I ever threw that dart out the window. I hung a map on my wall, and I blindfolded myself; just to throw a dart, and see where it’d land, well, it landed in the yard. I threw the dart to see where it wanted me to go, and through the bitter irony, it ended up being what stopped me from going anywhere. Because now there’s a dart sized whole in my foot. I don’t think I think anymore. If I had been thinking at all, I wouldn't of went into the back yard barefoot; there’s so much dog shit out there. I think, through out the course of the last hundred years, all anyone ever wanted was to be listened to. To know that their sorrow was heard. I wake up, and my side hurts every day; I’m too exhausted to run, because I don’t sleep well anymore. After drinking coffee all day, going to bed, is comparable to sleeping on something incredibly hot and itchy. Yeah, you can manage it, but you have to stand up every forty-five minutes to scratch your balls and cool off. My heart hurts after drinking so much coffee. Sometimes, enough that I contemplate going to the hospital, but then I remember that I don’t like hospitals anymore; that if I walk in there, complaining of heart pain, I’d probably be locked in a room for four hours until I stroked out all together. Yeah, I don’t like hospitals. This is my pain. And I carry it with me every day, along with seven cup’s of coffee and two red bulls. I feel like I’m slowly killing myself everyday, and I’m screaming in torment at the wall; no one hears me, and I don’t feel heard. I feel muffled. The pain in my chest and coffee cup in my hand tells me I’m not being dramatic, but reality taught me a long time ago, that help doesn’t usually ever come. And I don’t know what to do, because this life leaves me feeling empty and void, and in a significant amount of pain. I just don’t want to drink any more coffee. My side hurts.


If Google Earth were to update right now, take a snapshot of the world and allow it for everyone to see, you wouldn't see much. You'd notice bright flares, cities burning ferociously, towers of black smoke rising into the atmosphere, staining the planet. If you were to zoom in, somehow getting through all the smoke and smog, you'd see bodies. Streets filled with blood, vomit, and strewn corpses from sidewalk to sidewalk. The population of over 7 Billion was now cut down, maybe a few million left in total. Those few million were stranded. Probably burning alive in a building, or backpacking their way across their country to wherever they hope to find someone else. There's no shortage of radios. In the last few days no one really cared about the news or where to gather, it was just a smorgasbord of sex, drugs and partying, all of us waiting for the Earth to crack and finally swallow us up. We were given a month before our pale blue dot was nothing more. We didn't last 2 weeks. I wish I could tell you what the cause was, but I can't remember. No one can remember. The few stragglers I've come across in my wanders, those who haven't caved and killed themselves or gone crazy, couldn't tell me what any of the scientists said a mere 8 weeks before. All we knew is that as the people got less and less skeptical, as the evidence was insurmountable, people devolved into little more than beasts. At first people stopped going to work, then they started drinking. It wasn't long before people were beating each other to death over whatever mind altering substance they could get their hands on. Dealers were murdered not by their rivals, and not by the police, but by crazed addicts and desperate people looking to get distracted from our imminent death. Liquor stores were pillaged, trucks that were hauling alcohol had been nearly drank dry by the drivers who were pulling them. No one could cope, and no one would blame them. News fell apart with no broadcasters to announce it. You had people who tried to commander the place, someone at a CNN News Studio trying to replace Anderson Cooper. Meanwhile on Fox you had another crazed religious lunatic spewing hate speech, saying that the 'fags getting married are responsible for our destruction'. Not that many people saw it. Electricity was failing, televisions destroyed. Our cell phones couldn't get past much more than that, constantly being taxed by people weeping on the phone with their loved ones. And here I was, walking amongst it all. Surveying all this carnage after the days had gone past, seeing the ghosts of those beating each other to death with wine bottles, bricks, or bike chains. Teeth were crunching under my boots, blood causing the soles to become tacky and sticking to the asphault. In all those apocalypse movies you always saw cars piled up along the highway but I assumed that it was people dying as they were going to their family. No. These people died long before 'the end' arrived, just no ambulances or tow trucks to take them away. In the crazed panic of the world ending, no one thought to think about what if it didn't. Everyone shrieked and screamed, getting some satisfaction deep down about knowing when they were going to die. I mean, look at 2012. You had people yelling at the top of their voices for years about how the Mayans predicted our death and as the clock ticked on into 2013, it all faded away. Same for Y2K and every other world ending scenario that had been dreamed up by batshit people with too much time on their hands. But this time, with even the scientists agreeing, everyone let loose. They allowed themselves to believe in their end. They fully accepted it into their minds, souls and hearts and promptly lost their marbles. No one was around to tell us that we were going to pull through, no one was around to announce that the world was NOT ending. They had all either died in car accidents on their way home, plummeted into the ground when their flight crashed, or blown their brains all over the painted walls of their offices. The world ended, correct, but only because we allowed it to. Sure there are people left, but how many? How are we going to get infrastructure back and start over? Where do we gather? Who will lead us? It's funny really. This time last year I wanted to take a 9mm aspirin but today I'm actually enjoying myself. I don't know if that's still the shock or if some part of me is seeing the brighter side to all of this. The only thing I know is this, at least the lines at Disney Land won't be such a pain in the ass anymore.


I lived in a house on the hill of my thoughts; a broken home with parents with halted hearts. My blood was young but my mind so old; my body tattered but never my soul. I met her in the valley of my dying dreams, radiant with romance running in her ravenous veins. Relating her prose to carnivorous crows; she was as disparate as me with as many internal foes. On the grass we kissed with an appetite, she tasted of salt water, but drowning never felt so right. I didn’t know how to swim, but for her I would dive. I had never met anyone who made me feel so alive. Soon by noon I went home, after we grew weary. I don’t know where she went, but I hope it was somewhere near me. Edit: Punctuation and an attempt to format it correctly.


I dream of bright lights, a town to live without my shadow. Digging in the fiber of the streets and the passersby; Penetrating a future with dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. Her breasts smother my scarred breaths. Scraping lips and she tastes like summer blood. It'll pass and I'll never be the same. Looking for people in a crowd. Tearing skin and watching my past decay in hours. Bathing in the filth, just to be born in my own eyes. Entangling with the hurt I found in the beginning. Staying away, leaving my parted loneliness in her mouth. Orgasmsing in the ways that make my mother and father something I forget. Nobody loves themselves, so how could they love me? And I writhe in ‘comfort’, just to feel. Provoking searing glares because the numbness is like dry blood jarred underneath my nails. My life encapsulates a warm goodbye. Running to nothing to find myself.


Prompt: A man gifts dreams in a world where people have forgotten how to dream. When I first heard about him, I thought he was a myth; like Big Foot or the Yeti. I didn’t think it was possible, not anymore anyway. We, the human race, lost our ability to dream back in the late 2050s when governments began approving the commercialization of “designer babies.” For the first time in human history, parents could choose specific DNA traits that they would want their children to inherit. Children grew up brighter, more athletic, beautiful and eventually more successful than children conceived through traditional insemination. In a world filled with perfect human beings, the poor couldn’t afford to compete and over time the world’s population shrank to a point where everyone had been created in a lab. We now possessed the richest pool of genetic material than ever studied before. However, by about the second or third generation people began forgetting how to dream. It took years for studies and research to effectively conclude that people were no longer able to dream. Scientists dully explained the connection between the neurons that are active during the REM phase while we were asleep and nucleotides in our DNA, which became repressed and extinct over time. It was similar to the theory behind natural selection. The damage was done; it seemed inconsequential to people back then, they didn’t need as much sleep as the generations before then. Large genetic corporations who essentially customized babies spun it as “evolution.” People had no choice but to move on. Decades flew by. Dreaming was a lost design and Oneirology a forgotten science; our brains could no longer build the framework we needed to dream.The world we grew up in dreaming was a fable, told to little kids to get them to sleep. My grandfather used to tell me stories when I was a young boy about his grandfather who like all humans at the time, could dream. He spoke of the limitless nature of dreams; of precognition, visions and anything you ever wanted. I was always fascinated by the idea even though I never completely understood it. It was hard for me to imagine what a dream was, but I used to wish that when I fell asleep that I would be magically whisked away into my world of imagination. As I grew up, desires of dreaming faded away over time when I met the love of my life. All I wanted to do was to be with this gorgeous woman who somehow loved me too. I wanted to spend every moment of life making her smile and watching her laugh. She lit up my life and we were inseparable. I knew early on that she would always be the best thing every happened to me, I guess I won the jackpot early. You don’t win the lottery twice.. We were so close to getting married when she passed away in car accident. They could barely identify her remains. I’m I could’ve saved her if I was there. There was a giant hole in my heart and I didn’t want to fill it. My life was never going to be the same. Everything I saw was grey; I didn’t want to meet people or work anymore. I only wanted to be with her, at least one last time to say goodbye. I just wanted to see her smile again. Dreams.. The one place I knew I’d find her. While conducting research on the last known man to have dreamt, I found out that there was a man who was still alive, but barely. Through some persistence I convinced Mr. Takahama’s children to let me interview him. He was a lot older and more frail that I had pictured. The backstory was that he, being one of the earlier generations of designer babies, he retained the ability to dream till he was a teen. Now, at 120 years he was the last of the fortunate. During his interview, he told me that he last dreamt a couple of years ago. I was shocked, but his children brushed it off as a sign of old age. He pulled me closer and whispered, “there is a man who goes by the Dreamer, seek him and you shall find your answers.” I chuckled at the suggestion but Mr. Takahama said this more sternly than anything he had all evening. I went looking for “the Dreamer” but most my leads were dead ends. I was mocked by my colleagues at the university. I was searching for a ghost, for a man who didn't want to be found. A few people had heard of him but no one knew anything about him for certain. I spent the better part of a year chasing a shadow. I was close to giving up, but I wanted to experience what it felt like to dream. Fortunately, a few days before I was about concede in defeat, the phone rang. The man, one of my leads, spoke hurriedly, “we found him, we found Aserinsky.” “Who?” I asked. “Eugene Aserinsky, the Dreamer. We’ve located him Vienna. You better fly out tonight. This is the last chance you’ll ever get." I was excited but I tried to keep my expectations in check. I had never been so close but every other lead had ended in disappointment. I barely slept a wink on the flight to Vienna, Austria. I had so many questions and thoughts spinning through my head. I prayed that answers awaited me. I made my way towards the Albertina, a historic museum built in the 17th century, to meet Aserinsky. My contact had told him that I had spent a significant portion of my life studying dreams and managed to convince him to meet me. I wasn’t sure what to expect. He looked the part; an elderly man worn down by time. His silverish hair resonated wisdom and his light brown eyes gleamed of visions unseen. He spoke with a certain charisma that few developed. It became immediately known to me that he was the one I pursued. “Do you know why I asked you to meet me here?” He spoke clearly but softly. “Not really, I know this museum stores some of the rarest paintings from the Renaissance period centuries ago.” I replied, hoping to impress him. “Exactly, these painters were considered to be visionaries, romantics, dreamers and philosophers. This time period had a huge impact on human culture; the arts, science and the humanities. I’ve had dreams where I’m lost in this beauty.” “Dreams.. Do you dream?” I asked nervously. “Yes, I do dream. A long time ago, I discovered I had a gift for being able to dream and that I could give others the ability to dream. Our brains are no longer as capable of processing REM as decades ago, so the few men who I gave my ability to, eventually killed themselves because they couldn't distinguish a dream from reality. Why do you wish to dream so desperately?” “I wish to be with the one person who completed me. She was taken away from me and I would do anything to be with her again.”, I reasoned. “I must warn you that dreams are powerful; they are as real in your minds as life around you. You may die from your brain being unable to process the nerve impulse transmissions.The sad part would be that your mind wouldn’t know the difference between a dream and death.” Confidently I replied, “Yes, I understand the risks.” The next thing I remember is falling asleep in my bed, floating away in a timeless time where my soul escaped into a life that wasn’t my own. I didn’t know if I was dreaming or dead but I saw her. She looked as gorgeous as ever. Even if it was death, I found some solace in knowing that I would finally be with her.


She twists and turns under me; if it wasn't the look in her eye that got me going, it was her heavy breathing. So beautiful, so graceful, her body only incited me closer. If any one saw us now they would want to join me, they'd like to get on top of her as well. But I can't let them have her, I am in fact making her mine. She is so soft, her hair so long and sleek; like a black river slowly drowning her as it falls over her sweet... quiet face. My hand passes over her throat and then her chest; I love how it rises and falls, such a gentle girl. My sweet girl, you can not fight me. Look how weak you are now, have I tuckered you out? Do you want me to remove my weapon now? I was just starting to have fun. Oh stop struggling My Sweet, once I pull it out... You'll have only seconds to live. Just close your eyes dear fall asleep now, I'll keep you safe. The knife I had driven into her lungs; now lays on her throat. Her glassy green eyes stare at me, so lonely. Oh, My Sweet, gentle girl still so beautiful...even in your early yet perfect death. Sadly you now bore me child, when your mother gets home she will take your place...


Right now, someone is walking out of their apartment wondering where their car went. The black Honda held their work clothes along with their school papers isn’t parked on the street where it had been left. The man pulls his phone from his pocket and dials his work, tells them that his car has been stolen, and then he dials the police. That black Honda is a city away, under the roof of a large warehouse where it is being cut into pieces along with unnumberable bits other vehicles. The interior has been stripped. Personal items that are either identifiable or worthless to the new owners have been trashed. The engine has already been removed. The tires, springs and doors are being shopped around for buyers while they are in the process of being stripped from the cars frame. Walking from that warehouse is a man. Counting five hundred dollars in cash, he figures that he can pay for his half of the rent and he will be able to buy his daughter a small gift for her birthday. He doesn’t get to see his daughter as much as he would like, she lives across town, in a nice area. Her mom refused to let her child grow up in the streets that he could afford to live on. On her nice streets, his daughter is walking home from school right now. She’s excited about her test, wanting to put it up on the refrigerator. Proud, she wants to display her latest A to the world. When she gets home she has to celebrate alone though, because her mother is still at her office. At work, her mother, has to get the bosses schedule straight, set up meetings, presentations and lunches to go along with interviews and phone calls. But the hardest part is keeping a smile on her face while he hits on her. The man sits on her desk, smiling, asking if there is anything he could do to make her job more comfortable. Back at the boss’s home his wife, who didn’t wait for her husband to make the first betrayal, was busy in the bedroom with an old flame, a true love that she had never been able to shake. The woman made the decision to marry into money and live comfortably, but she hasn’t been able to stop making the mistake of seeing the man her heart longs for. Her love was a man who had never fit well into anything, her family, a nice school or a steady job. He seemed to get rejected from every aspect of life that he put himself into. Now he was trying to keep hold on an art career, waiting for it to take off. Art was the current love of his life. His fist painting had finally been sold by his agent, a friend of his. It was sold at a much lower price than what his friend had promised. But he had needed to make room in the gallery for items that would actually attract some interest from buyers. The painting had been picked up by the agent’s son, to be delivered to the buyer’s home this evening before his son went to work tonight. That was when his son realized that it wasn’t just his work things that were in his car, and dials the phone number for his father.


Marie awoke to the sound of the front door closing. Through blurred vision she looked at the clock on her nightstand and saw that it was almost four in the morning. She reached out across the bed seeking the comfort of her husband's body, but only found a chill as her hand emerged empty from under the covers. Anxiety filled her mind while despair filled her heart. It was unlike Kyle to leave this late without saying a thing. Eyes still closed she slid her feet down to the cold wood floor and stood up to walk to the bathroom. The chill of the floorboards and sudden glaring light from the bathroom brought Marie out of her dazed state, which made her worry more as she turned to look at the lonely bed she had just abandoned. She sat on the rim of the tub and looked down at her toes, chipped purple nail polish and a bit long, she reached under the sink and got some nail clippers and polish. Marie always did tedious work when she was on the brink of a panic attack, the repetition and mindlessness closes out the world around her for at least a little while. Nails finished she looked into the mirror, she found peace in her own eyes that she didn't feel in herself. She left the bathroom losing the battle to stay awake, ready to forget about her anxieties and sadness for a few hours, but the moment she stepped foot back on the cold bedroom floor a noise alerted her downstairs. Her heart began to race, every single possibility of what could be down there flashed through her brain, but she knew it was just Kyle. She rushed to the bed and under the not so safe security of the covers, but she knew it was just Kyle. Heat started to build as her breathing got heavier and heavier under the covers, time kept going to matter how much she wanted it to stop and get her mind straight, it had to be just Kyle. The bedroom door opened and Kyle walked in. Relief flew over her, but questions she would never ask him arose in her mind, where had he been all those hours, when he left her behind.


Running from Reality (Copy and Pasted from word) The day was covered by darkness, the sky a dull gray. Hidden by the ominous clouds, the sun wasn’t in sight. The air taunted of damp grass and fresh rain, even though it never rained. It all looked abandoned, all except for one small boy alone on the swings, relishing in memories there every day. * * * * * * Small cracks of light, coming through the drapes that weren’t completely closed, were shining in Adabel’s bright emerald eyes. Turning to her side a headache blazed into her brain, spreading like wildfire. Very slowly, she built up the energy to get out of the, now disheveled bed; whose blankets had become like a trap to her. The headache was getting worse, but Adabel had become accustomed to living with it. Standing in front of the mirror, she looked at the reflection with disgust etched into her features. She ignored the sight; she didn’t bother to brush out her wavy brown hair… no point in making it frizzy. “I already look bad enough,” she thought to herself while pulling it into a bun. Grabbing a sweat shirt and her keys, she went out into the cool air of the autumn day. Watching others, she thought of nothing as she walked around her small town. Hoping she would see one sign of kindness, in this world she knew all but too well. She crossed a small bridge over a tiny stream that was probably at one point a beautiful river. Past the woods of the large, practically abandoned park was a beaten down play set for children, including a small slide with a hole punched through the middle and a swing set with only two swings left and the remains of the third. It was as if the wind was carrying sounds of the children of the past that used to play among it. It all looked abandoned, all except for one small boy alone on the swings. Adabel hadn’t noticed him until she was two feet in front of him. He was only about ten, five years younger than she. He seemed as though he hadn’t noticed her either, but in reality he was wondering why anyone had come to this old beat down park. Who is he? Adabel thought as she went to sit on the swing next to the young boy. She rolled her sleeves down even though they were too long for her arms and only showed the tips of her fingers. Watching the child, she began to push herself on the swing. He looked tired; dark circles had made a home under his dull gray eyes. They looked similar to the dark circles she had. His chestnut brown hair became disheveled in the strong wind. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it is rude to stare?” He said finally looking up at her “No.” Adabel replied while she fidgeted with her hands in her lap. ”She left me and my dad when I was a baby.” “I’m sorry.” He said. “No you’re not, you just regret saying anything about it.” “No, I understand. My mother died a while back. It’s okay though, I saw it coming, she was depressed for a long while before. It finally got to her, found her hanging from the ceiling fan when I got home from school one day.” He said with a sad smile. “Who are you?” Adabel asked; astonished at the bluntness he used when talking of his mother. “I’m Imre.” He replied extending his hand for a handshake. She took it and shook it lightly. When she went to pull her hand back he held it a bit tighter and grabbed onto her sleeve and rolled it up, revealing many white scars, some fresh and new giving a red tinge on her arm. Imre loosened his grip and she yanked her arm free. Adabel’s face grew warm becoming red with rage and she stopped the rocking of her swing by slamming her feet on the ground. “You don’t have to be alone ya’ know,” He told her, “I’m here every day, when you’re ready to talk.” Without saying another word, Adabel jumped up and started to walk away, pulling down her sleeves as she went. Before she could control herself she was running, tears starting to brew in her eyes, spilling over the brim, making her long eyelashes clump together and blurring the world around her. And there it was again, the pounding back in her head as she slumped down against the back of her bedroom door. No one had been able to see through her fake smile before. She had always been able to just dismiss people of their concern by saying she was tired and tell them she got cold easily to cover the cuts on her arms. Imre had seen straight through her in the few minutes they had sat together. Adabel wiped her tears and walked to the table beside her bed, she opened up the drawer and took out an old pocket knife. She had found it in her dad’s old tool box and figured he wouldn’t notice it was gone, and he didn’t. Adabel’s father, Mr.Jones, was only home for seven hours a day. He would come home wreaking of alcohol and, after he had sobered up, eat something with Adabel and then get some sleep. They weren’t very close, she practically hated him. Always thinking he didn’t care about her at all. No wonder mom left him. Adabel thought to herself as she took out the knife, running the icy touch of the blade along her wrists. A small trail of red followed in the wake of the blade. Numbness was all she felt. How else was she supposed to know she was alive? When she heard a car door slam she ran to her bathroom running the water of the faucet over her arms. The warm water burned her skin, turning it into a field of trees caught in a wildfire, skin blazing and turning raw. Hearing the soft vibrating buzz of the microwave heating up their so-called dinner, she knew her father was almost fully aware now. She heard the thump-thump-thumping of her father’s boots against the hard wooden floors growing louder as he got closer to the bathroom. His soft tapping of knuckles and muffled voice let her know to come sit with him and eat something. She turned the water off, pulling down her sleeves once again, exiting the bathroom, she already felt nauseous at the thought of food. She stared blankly ahead as she sat, making an excuse to not eat, lying saying she wasn’t hungry. As Mr.Jones ate, he talked about his work at the factory and some men at the bar after he left. It was nothing but a murmur to Adabel. “Adabel!” he yelled as he slammed his hands down onto the table. “Sorry, I stopped caring a long time ago about that stuff. You can repeat it if you want, but chances are I’m still not going to care.” Adabel muttered bluntly, looking Mr.Jones straight in the eyes. “Adabel, stop pretending like you don’t have any emotions!” He yelled, louder at her this time. “It’s not my fault you don’t notice there is something wrong with your only daughter! No wonder mom left you. You’re too self-centered to care about anyone but yourself!” She screamed. A hard force slammed against her cheek, blinding her for a moment in white hot pain. A ringing formed in her ears as she cupped her palm against her face. A dark bruise was already becoming noticeable on the sharp features of her cheek bone. When they had both began to realize what had just happened they backed away from each other. Adabel ran into her room, slamming and locking the door then collapsing on the bed. Simply listening to the sounds of life around her, she didn’t sleep that night; instead, she stayed awake. She grabbed the pocket knife from her bedside table and climbed out her window. As soon as her feet hit the ground she took off running towards the park. At least Mr.Jones wouldn’t have to be the one to find her dead, was all she was thinking of when she reached the park. Some random person will wind up finding me and they won’t even care, they don’t even know me. She reasoned to herself as she held the knife against her chest. Of course, it will take a while for someone to notice me, after all people barely ever come here. And as she thought this her eyes fell across the old play set and landed on a solemn figure sat on the swings. She remembered Imre and all he had been through. If she died he would have no one. Letting the knife relax from her grip, she began to walk to him. “Take this.” Adabel said handing him he knife. “I can’t use it anymore.” “Thank you. You don’t deserve it anyway. We just need to look out for eachother for a little while. We can be each other’s guardian angel.” Imre said. He was the only person Adabel had ever met that was able to read her like a book. “You’re right we deserve better.” She said. A small sprinkle of mist started to drizzle down on them. Adabel smiled as she sat on the swing next to Imre, extending her hand towards him. It began to pour with rain; the pitter-patter of raindrops felt comfortable as he took her hand. “You’re smiling,” Imre stated watching her features for a hint, to tell if it was genuine, “for real this time.” “I guess I finally have a reason to smile.