What I wanted was to get away. But the moon was too far beyond, and there were white bits under me, where the flesh was shredded off and the bone gleamed that famed ivory, and those below cowered and, if they were not quick enough, were spattered in ...
Split your skull—a hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrument—a scalpel, perhaps—and make a hand-sized slit; it doesn’t matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very bottom, pinch the inside layer of membra...
Nico scowled. ‘It’s none of your business, but I don’t belong. That’s obvious. No one wants me. I’m a child of –’ ‘Oh, please.’ Will sounded unusually angry. ‘Nobody at Camp Half-Blood ever pushed you away. You have friends – or...
The unrelenting grip of Soldier’s Syndrome slips finger by slow finger. The marrow’s been affected—emotional leukemia at the deepest level. Transplants of love and friendship aid healing, yet time is still key, and the clock never ticks fast en...
Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspired fool burst into song – if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish ...
My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse—and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of—a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am ...
Like a butterfly in glass, I want to fly away to you but the invisible walls contain me. It’s not time. Hard to accept when I feel your words calling to me. Your soul beckoning me with its pull. Come to me, you say in one breath; stay, you say in a...
When he finished, he drank from the cup. Everyone else did too, so I followed suit. And nearly choked to death. It was like fire in liquid form. It took every ounce of strength I had to swallow it and not spray it on those around me. "Wh...what is th...
BAIT GOAT There is a distance where magnets pull, we feel, having held them back. Likewise there is a distance where words attract. Set one out like a bait goat and wait and seven others will approach. But watch out: roving packs can pull your word a...
Dinah and I were raised to believe money taints ordinary people, obstructs virtue, and makes a fool out of you. So, the inheritance was like a tiger somebody’d left on the doorstep of my house, and I had to figure out something to do with it. Havin...
He used to talk to me about Russia all the time and had sworn up and down that I'd love it here. "To you, it'd be like a fairy tale," he'd told me. "Sorry, comrade. Borg and out-of-date music aren't part of any happy ending I've ever imagined." "Bors...
Well, " she replied dryly, "there's no getting around that. And it's not me being nice. It's not even my choice. It's an order from my superiors. " "It still sounds like a pain in the ass for you. Why don't you just tell me where it is and blow them ...
Letter to Rose from Strigoi Dimitri. Delivered to Rose after her return from Russia and her quest to Kill Dimitir, which she thought she completed. "You forgot another lesson: Never turn your back until you know your enemy is dead. Looks like we'll h...
But like all moments trapped in time, that moment would end and Joey Boldt, as all the greats before him did, would begin to understand that clinging too tightly to anything results in Time and Fate shaking you until you can't hold on any longer. And...
For good or for bad, we define ourselves in many ways by the gadgets we use and the clothes we wear. We don't want to surround ourselves with cheap products. Nobody really aspires to that. We also don't want to pay for a diamond-encrusted ereader. We...
How can I say what it was like to breathe again? I felt newborn. I staggered in the light of the world and took deep gulps of fresh sea air. It was late in the day: the wet mouth of the afternoon was full on my face. My soul blossomed in that brief m...
Gabby couldn't believe what he had just said. Her mouth gaped open and a flirty smile came over her. She slowly peeled her half wet white t-shirt over her head and then slowly shimmied out of her shorts. What had gotten into her? She had never acted ...
Happier are all men than the dwellers in Faerie – or the gods, for that matter…Better a life like a falling star, bright across the dark, than a deathlessness that can see naught above or beyond itself…the day draws nigh when Faerie shall fade,...
When I think about "Freedom" and America's future. You have to remember that "Freedom" is more about what you do in the trying moments......how you move forward.......and what path you set. It's more about who you are as a person..........like family...
i bring my kiasu friend to the airport leavings are never easy, not for long and though we both saw blur along the way memories flooded present tensions. in the curry of his life no lemak remained so now the predictable exit signalled the end of his ...
I didn't mind what she called me, what anybody called me. But this was the room I had to live in. It was all I had in the way of a home. In it was everything that was mine, that had any association for me, any past, anything that took the place of a ...
