The Secret Cave

(Mine)

"I still have your key."

She turned sharply on her heels and glared at me. "Really?" she cried, "why didn't you say so earlier?" Even ten years later, her eyes lit up just like when we were in middle school together. She really hadn't changed at all.

I nodded, a vaguely familiar tingling feeling rising up the back of my neck. It was the perpetual excitement that I had every time I spent time with Jo. She had been the school tomboy, Ms. Joanne Phelps, to our catholic schoolmarms but woe on anyone who dared call her that outside of classes. It was always Jo, always has been and apparently, looking at her walking in those rolled up jeans and grease stained T-shirt, always will be.

We had been best friends since 4th grade, when she'd found my hiding spot back behind the school barn and declared it her new palace. She had been the one to find the buried "dinosaur bone" when we were adventurers in the Sahara, the one that fought off the shadow Indians as they tried to take her throne, and the first to try out the "wings" we'd made of pine board and chicken feathers from Momma's kitchen. That had resulted in twenty horsehair stitches which she proudly wore around school for a month. During that time, we were soldiers fighting a bitter war of freedom for our tiny kingdom.

Over the summers, I spent the days at her house. She lived in the old ranch at the end of road. Her momma had taken to drink after her dad died and it was really just Jo and a couple of ranch hands who kept the farm running and the cattle fed. We built a veritable treasure trove of memories up in the back attic. She had this big metal cookie tin that we filled with our stories and drawings. She was a very good artist, drawing vivid sketches of the monsters we fought and the various roles we played and pages of maps detailing the expanse of land we ruled. That attic was in many ways the culmination of all that we did as kids. We'd called it the Cave of Immense Secrets and we swore on our word as spies to swallow the plans to its location even under extreme torture.

It was the key to her house that Jo was pulling off my keychain right now. She had given it to me so I could sneak in the back and tiptoe up the stairs without facing the drunk anger of Mrs. Phelps. I'd always kept it a secret from Momma; it went with me, tucked in my sock, when we moved to Kansas and was the first key I put on my keychain at college. "Meet me on the steps of CIS, at midnight," she declared, using the acronym we'd developed to keep the cave a secret. Her eyes were twinkling again.

And so thus, I found myself on her dust-covered front porch and it's boarded up windows, no different, now, from every house in town. That tingle was rising up the back of my spine. Something howled in the distance and I shuddered involuntarily, scanning the dark street for Jo.

Her momma had passed on shortly after our move. At the insistence of community, Jo was supported into a boarding school on the money from selling the cattle. The ranch was never sold: a dilapidated building on the outskirts of town wasn't in much demand, especially since all the jobs were moving to the big city. Jo had suffered through the rest of her education, escaping as soon as she turned eighteen and becoming a truck mechanic in the city. She'd been the one to track me down, fresh out of business school, and at her insistence, I'd driven down to meet her for the weekend.

Jo interrupted my reverie by shining her flashlight straight into my face. I hadn't even heard her truck pull up. She laughed at my jolt and pulled me to my feet. In seconds, I was looking out through the broken attic window at the blackness of dry Midwestern grassland. Jo was busy scanning the floorboards for the loose one under which we kept our box.

"Found it!" she cried, lifting out her prize and laying out its contents on the dusty attic floor. The pages had yellowed but the memories and the adventures were still there. Soon we were lost in the past, laughing and joking -- children again.

At some point during the night, Jo disappeared. I was too engrossed to follow, knowing full well that she'd get me when she needed a second person for our games. Even when her screams lashed through the darkness, I simply smiled, finished the paragraph I was reading and got to my feet. Jo had found the "monster" she was hunting and was probably doing a pretty decent job attacking it with whatever she had found handy. Only when I heard the inhuman growling did I start running.

Out in the dusty street of the deserted town, my worst fears were confirmed. Jo's body lay collapsed, her broken neck leaking blood into the parched earth. The last monster she ever fought was real. Later on, they determined it was a coyote.

==========
Much thanks to Mark Gebhard for these lines.

Currently grooving to: Tracy Byrd - Drinkin' Bone

The Weight of a Feather, the Weight of a Heart

(Yune)

"I still have your key. Don't you want it back?"

"Yes," she said. "But you can slip it under my door or mail it to me."

"Then how can I be sure you've gotten it?" he asked in reasonable tones.

Angie sighed and put her head down on the desk, setting the phone aside for a moment. She remembered her mother warning her not to give her spare apartment key to just anyone. But Chris hadn't been just anyone--they'd been going out, she'd trusted him, and then he'd had to change after his trip to Egypt during spring break. She didn't want him to be able to enter her apartment anymore. He wasn't being a creepy stalker, just...different. She put the phone back to her ear to listen to the stranger with Chris's voice.

"I just want to see you," he was saying. "Can we at least talk in person once? Then I'll give you back your key and I promise I won't bother you again."

Defeated, she said, "Okay. I've got some free time tomorrow--"

"Now. Please."

"Why?"

"Because I have to see you before 2.00 pm today."

She blew out her breath. If he wanted to see her so badly, couldn't he fit his other appointments around her? "Fine. Meet me on the steps of CIS in twenty minutes."

"I was thinking we could go out somewhere."

She closed her eyes. He had used to say that before they went out on a date. I was thinking we could go to the beach, or to the movies, or anything, it hadn't mattered; as long as she was spending it with him, she'd known the night would be wonderful. The memories made her voice less sharp than she wanted. "I've got research to do, Chris. I have a whole bunch of equipment running that I can't leave for long."

"Your office, then," he said. "Somewhere private, at least."

"Fine," she said, defeated, and hung up.

In all honesty, she wanted to talk to him too. She missed him and his gentle sense of humor. She hadn't thought they would make it, a grad student in electrical engineering and an assistant professor in anthropology, but they'd done so well for the first two quarters. She'd been going to ask him whether he wanted to move in with her, since she'd given her key to him anyway. And then...

She was useless for the next twenty minutes. She wandered around her office, unnecessarily checking the cameras and computers that were part of the research project she was working on. Some impulse made her turn on one of the cameras and discreetly aim it so that it would capture the area around her desk. She didn't think Chris would do anything irrational, but something kept nagging at her.

He showed up precisely on time. He reached for her for the casual kiss of greeting they'd always shared before, and at first, pure habit led her to relax into his embrace. She missed these little shows of affection. Then she recalled herself and jerked away. She didn't miss the flash of hurt on his face before he smoothed his expression.

"Angie, what's wrong?"

"You are," she burst out. "Ever since the start of the quarter. You've been acting differently. More...resigned. Deliberate. And that's not the Chris I know."

He looked away. "Ever since I got back from Egypt, you mean."

"Yeah. Chris, what happened? When you left you were so excited about traveling through the desert, getting to see the old tombs..."

"I got to see them. That's what happened."

She shook her head. "You say things like that, too."

After a moment he said, "Angie, you're an atheist, right? You don't believe in an afterlife?"

The question was so unexpected that she actually answered it. "No."

"The Ancient Egyptians had a jackal-headed god, Anubis. They believed that when you died, Anubis would balance your heart against a feather, and if your heart was heavier, you would be eaten by a terrible demon."

"It must have been a very sated demon," Angie said after a moment. "Because, no pun intended, the game seems weighted to me. Chris, what does this have to do with anything?"

"I love Ancient Egypt. Its religion, its history, its culture... But there was so much left to learn. And when I had the chance to learn more, I took it." He smiled sadly. "I never believed in ancient curses. You can still get in trouble today, though. Even though they're fair in their own way. You get judgment under their own system."

She didn't understand. "Did you find something out there? Another tomb? Did you mess with it and get in trouble with the Egyptian authorities?"

He ignored her. "And they give you a little time first. Enough to tell the people you care about that you love them."

Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Excuse me," she managed to say before stumbling out of the office and blindly making her way to the restroom, where she cried into a crumpled ball of paper towels. Then she washed her face, hoped her nose wasn't too red, and walked back toward her office. On her way back, the power went out. She cursed half-heartedly. Whenever you thought things couldn't get any worse... Just as she reached her door, the lights flickered back on.

"Chris? Sorry about that."

He was gone.

At first she panicked, but then her glance fell on the clock and she saw that it was just past two. He'd probably had to run to his meeting. She sighed. What he had said about loving her--that was the sort of thing she needed to hear before they could patch things up. Not this ancient mystical crap. And he'd had to leave without a word or even returning her key--

No, on her desk was her spare apartment key and a...feather.

Angie stood still for a moment. Then something made her turn to the camera, rewind it, and hit playback.

She skipped through until she got to the part where she ran out of the frame. Chris was left there. Slowly, he removed something from his pocket: the key. He laid it carefully on her desk, then straightened. His posture was that of a man awaiting something.

There was suddenly a shadowy figure appeared just behind him--

The image suddenly cut to emptiness.

Angie could've screamed. That had been when the power had gone out.

...perhaps because of the smothering presence of an even greater power?

She didn't believe this, she told herself fiercely. But something inside her knew. She started crying again, because although they had given him enough time to tell her that he loved her, they hadn't given him enough time for her to tell him the same.

When she groped for the box of Kleenex, her hand fell on the feather instead, and her fingers tightened around it.

It was astoundingly heavy, at least as much as a bowling ball. She ended up lifting it with two hands.

Her own heart lightened. They were fair, Chris had said. And Chris had been a good person. What if they did tip the scales one way, but not always in the wrong direction...?

She didn't need the confirmation, but she carefully clipped out the figure she had captured and sent the cropped image to a couple of zoologist friends, saying that it had been seen on her grandfather's ranch. Because it was so blurry, and because there were no jackals in California, they determined it was a coyote.

Mr. President

Somehow we have even more lines ... tireless, we are. Personally I found these lines extremely difficult, but you don't want to hear me whine. You just want to read what we wrote and maybe get a laugh out of the incompetence.

For mine, I was trying to bring in an earlier story, so you should read that first. They only barely overlap in universes but it helps put this in context.

Tom began sleepwalking again. He always did that the night before his big speeches. It was the only way he showed his true anxiety. The public saw only the fearless president. They had grown to expect much from the graying man who spoke with an easy confidence, the man who never paced in the Oval Office. Even now, as the rebels were descending upon a stunned planet, only his husband, John, saw him rising from their bed and begin pacing up and down the bedroom. John knew better than to wake him; it only made him jittery and unfocussed the next day. In light of this international crisis, Tom needed all the composure he could get.

Just three hours ago, the world had been balanced. Way up in space, the planetsiders were defending well against the rebels and apart from a few casualties in space, there was relative peace. That all changed a few minutes after 2100 hours when a traitor starfighter had destroyed the main defense station. She had died, but that wasn't going to stop the rebels from having open access to the Earth's surface. Tom was meeting with them tomorrow. John shook his head sadly as he watched the President wearing away at the carpets, oblivious in his sleep.

* * *

Tom spoke on the evening news. He was seated beside the rebel leader:
a surprisingly young man who looked quite dashing in a pinstriped sports coat. They had spent the day through the details of the power transition. The rebels, for all their guerilla fighting techniques were very peaceable. There was going to be no more fighting, fifteen years of that had been enough for both sides. Tom even managed to convince the greenhorn of the necessity of keeping the existing, however inefficient, system of government on planetside. Now, in front of billions of viewers, Tom lowered his pen to sign the final turnover document. He didn't flinch, exuding the calm elegance he had cultivated over his thirty-year political career.

The young man for whom a life in politics was just beginning didn't have it so easy. It hadn't taken an hour for him to realize the enormity of the role he was being thrust into. During his speech, he'd faltered and tripped over his words, running over the periods and inserting pauses mid-phrase. He shouldn't be the nervous one; heck, he was the victor. His was the side that history favored. But as his pen headed for the blank space under Tom's signature, it shook uncontrollably. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.

A firm steady hand gripped his own and with the slow strength guided the pen to paper. It was Tom. Gently, but loud enough so he could be heard on camera, he said encouragingly, "We all panic; you should have seen me pacing last night."

John looked up, startled, at his husband. But then, he understood. The transition would have happened regardless. The world needed faith in its new leader. This public gesture; it allowed him to avoid a paradox.

For the Sleepwalkers

(Yune's)

Tom began sleepwalking again when they moved to the new house. His mother would come into his room in the morning, only to discover mud on the carpet and grass stains on his feet. She said nothing except, "Wake up, dear," and waited until he was out of the house before she began fretting.

Her husband had been a sleepwalker as well. Night after night she would wake up to find the sheets thrown aside, only the indentation of his body left in the mattress, his warmth already gone. She would always rise, throw a robe over her nightgown, and run outside to find him. In the beginning she had called his name, but eventually she had learned that Edward couldn't hear her in that state, even when she caught his arm and spoke directly into his face. The only thing she could do was guide him firmly back to the house and into bed, while he looked over his shoulder with unseeing eyes, yearning for whatever had drawn him out into the night in the first place.

She never learned what it was. On one of his midnight searches, Edward crossed a street to find it and was hit by a truck.

Things had been hard after that, but she lavished her love upon their son instead. It had frightened her when he too started sleepwalking the night after the funeral. She consulted a family friend.

"He may be trying to look for his father," Carlos suggested. "Instead of dreaming, he actually goes out and seeks Edward."

She shuddered. "Sleepwalkers aren't that purposeful, are they?" But what had been so compelling to draw Edward from her side? It hurt to think that she hadn't been able to give him everything he needed: love and companionship and a child, a well-kept home and his every domestic need provided. And yet something had still been lacking.

For Tom too, now? She tried to be twice as much of a mother, to make up for Edward's absence. She packed him lavish lunches and filled his day with play dates, took him to watch G-rated movies and tucked him in every night at nine o'clock, kissed his forehead, and prayed.

But the next day she would always find his footprints in the garden.

She had chosen the house for its small size--suitable for the two of them--and its proximity to his school, so he wouldn't have to adjust to new classmates. A change of place without all the empty spaces to remind them of Edward would help, she had thought. The real estate agent had tried hard to push the garden as a plus, but she had no green thumb, and it was overrun with wisteria vines and wild rose bushes. She had figured they could simply keep the back door locked and get their ration of greenery from the evenly-mowed lawn out front.

At first she wondered why Tom, obviously capable while sleepwalking of opening and closing doors and minding the small set of steps out back, could not manage to pull on socks and shoes before venturing outdoors. But a few minutes of thought cured her of her annoyance over the dirt tracked into her neat house. At least Tom was not heading out into the streets, where he might meet the same fate as Edward.

One night, she deliberately made herself a cup of coffee at nine o'clock, and settled herself at the kitchen table. She had never stayed up past midnight before. Her days were rigidly scheduled, and her body followed the clock she set for it. But tonight she grimly clung to her caffeine and waited.

Tom's door opened. Barefoot, he walked through the kitchen and then out into the garden. She followed and stood in the doorway to watch him.

There was a maple tree in the corner; he went straight to it and clambered up its trunk with an agility that bespoke prior experience. She drew in a breath to shout at him and make him get down immediately, but then she remembered that he would not hear her.

He climbed high enough that the branches began to bend dangerously under his weight. He hung onto the limb with both hands and swung his body down, landing perfectly. Then he threw his arms up the way a gymnast would after a successful vault, and then he laughed.

She froze. She hadn't heard Tom laugh for a long time.

There hadn't been any laughter in her house for a long time. Even when Edward had been there.

She remembered one more thing Carlos had said before they had parted. "Give the boy a little room, won't you?"

She had stiffened, appalled at the suggestion. She had been so certain that what Tom needed was more of her in his life. But maybe her mothering had grown claustrophobic. Maybe he did need some space apart from her, space to grow and be himself.

And hadn't Edward too once been more spontaneous, back in their days of courtship? Somehow, once they had married, she had fit him into the neatly bordered hours she lived by. It had been comfortable for her, but perhaps dull for him. And when the daily routine had grown so cloying that he had escaped during the only time he could, when he was unconscious...

She watched Tom play in the garden for a little longer, and then went back inside. She shouldn't let her presence invade on this short period of release. Her own sleep that night was restful, and when she went to wake her son up the next morning, her smile wasn't forced at all.

Tom was a dutiful son by day and a free wanderer by night. His sleepwalking troubled her no more. It freed both their hearts, for it allowed him to avoid a paradox.

Yune would like to mention that the title for this piece was taken from a poem by Edward Hirsch.

I broke it... my bad.

In a somewhat stupid attempt to try out the new blogger commenting (if it ain't broke...), I broke my old template. I know, the old CS adage of always having a backup was not followed. That's life. Thus, there has been a radical change in the formatting of the webpage as I switch over to a default (and hopefully working) template from blogger.

--C.

Once.

Much thanks to Jim for these lines and for putting up with how much I torture myself in these inane ways.

He died. At least his brain did. Over the course of a month, they'd been monitoring its slow decay and so that morning, rather unsurprisingly, the little green screen plugged into his temples flashed red. There was very little that anyone could honestly do. Even now that all other aging and disease has been brought to a near halt, neural degeneration was still a big killer.

His body, however, was far too valuable to the movie industry to give up. They had spent millions of dollars on building the fine skin and perfect musculature and absolutely symmetric features; it would cost simply too much to have another Phillip Monroe bred. Even the vocal chords were developed for the perfect deep resonant timbre of the swaggering male lead. His famous smile and signature jokes made millions at the cineplexes. Yes, undoubtedly, Phillip Monroe was quite the investment.

The solution was obvious. For years the scientists have been working on mental replacement implants. All they had to do was review the lot of his movies, study the steady elegance of the way he moved, examine shot after shot of that smile. In a short two months, Mr. Monroe was good as new. The scientists had even included a single hairline slot at the base of the cranium where his future directors could just insert a disk with lines and staging and he'd perform flawlessly. It was the way of the future.

Phillip Monroe was reintroduced to society at an exclusive evening gala. All of high society was there, from former co-stars to top name executives. He had a single thirty minute speech prepared and, of course, he delivered flawlessly. He winked at the stunning lady in the front row as he mentioned his excitement for working with his future co-stars, right on cue. He flashed his smile more than enough times and some of his best jokes rolled right off his tongue, just like when he'd first said them.

As his thirty minutes were ticking over, almost right to the second, he made an elegant conclusion and turned the podium over to the various directors and producers that were slated to speak after him, to thunderous applause. The next few speakers were far from memorable. There was the joke of how he'd never forget his lines again, to polite titters from the audience. Mostly talk was on how a great actor had literally been resurrected from the dead, how what had once been a man was now a star.

At the cocktail party afterwards, everyone wanted to be seen with the man of the hour. More than a few times, Phillip would smile that perfect smile, and reel of one of those jokes. Including a slightly off-color but terribly funny one about a woman he once loved. In the ensuing laughter, a tall slender and slightly tipsy blonde touched his arm, remarking, "Ah, but what do you really know of love, now?"

An awkward silence froze conversations throughout the room. As the truth slowly dawned on various partygoers, a silicon chip decided that the silence was waiting for another prepackaged piece of wit. The handsome face broke into that mathematically precise grin and the resonant timbre began in measured cadence.

"I knew a man, once…"

Currently grooving to: Papa Roach - Last Resort

I wonder...

What does it say about me, as a person, when my spontaneous short stories are about:

A suicidal novelist
A verbal spy
A failed murder attempt by someone's wife
A cheeky prisoner
A mischeivous kindergartener
A Jewish nurse that rescues babies

I wonder.

(Compared to?

Yune:

A horrific extraterrestial parasite
A space traitor
A French archeologist wooing an English lady
A thief that robs the women he sleeps with

Rose:

A writer inspired by a strong woman in a French cafe.)

Yeah, ok, so I'm not that weird.

Currently grooving to: Ani Difranco - 32 Flavors

The Morning After

(Yune)

The postscript had been hastily scribbled, and Roger had to squint it into legibility. Call me sometime. 291-29... Was that a four or another nine? Then a six or a zero? He shook his head and carried the note into the kitchen, where he helped himself to breakfast. She hadn't even bothered to stick around the next morning. Thank goodness--he had no further interest in her anyway. He couldn't even quite recall her name. Martha? Margaret?

The doorbell rang. He opened the door to find her--Maria, that's it--standing outside the door.

"I forgot my keys," she said, brushing past him. "And I need an umbrella."

He watched helplessly as she tracked mud onto the carpet. She seemed an entirely different person from last night, when she'd been so soft and warm in his arms. It was the red business suit, he decided. It gave her an air of authority and made it difficult to confront her. And it didn't help that he should have been wearing pants. He made a mental note to himself. Answering the door naked, not a good idea. Especially when it's not your own apartment.

"It's raining?" he asked to break up the awkward silence as they both searched the mess that was her living room.

"Yeah, hopefully an end to the heat wave. The rain was a welcome relief, until I got wet." She smiled wryly.

He found the umbrella, stashed in the space between the wall and the couch. "Hey, found it," he said, lifting it.

"You're wonderful!" She came to him and claimed the umbrella, then hesitated. She put it down and took his hands instead. "Actually, that's the third reason I came back. I wanted to say sorry for just leaving you like that."

"Don't worry about it," he said, startled.

"It's just that I haven't invited a guy into my apartment in years. So I kind of panicked. But I feel like I can really trust you. We'll be all right, yeah?"

"Yeah," he said weakly.

She kissed him, then left with the umbrella in her hand and a smile on her face. He thought he even heard her humming.

He waited several more minutes to make sure she wouldn't come back again, then shook his head. He of all men knew that some women fell easily, but Maria...

He sorted meticulously through the piles of stuff scattered throughout her apartment. There were quite a lot of loose bills. Her jewelry box was a real find. A few small antiques proved portable and likely to yield a decent profit.

Her keys were on the dresser; she'd forgotten them again in the haste to fetch her umbrella and make amends to him. They seemed to be her only set. Why not? he thought. It would delay her re-entrance to the apartment and give him more time before she could find out exactly whom she had really trusted.

He closed the door behind him, pocketed the key, and walked off whistling.

Portrait of a Six-Year-Old Escapee

(Mine)

He closed the door behind him, pocketed the key, and walked off whistling. It was final. I was incarcerated for the first time in my short six year life. It was absolutely aggravating that dad was so cheerful about it. Doesn't it say in some parenting manual that you should at least feel sorry for your kids when you ground them? Isn't there something in Freud between the oversized breasts and phallic symbols about children's emotional development? I could feel my brain scarring for life. HELLO!? Scarring going on RIGHT HERE. Oh look, Dad's back. "Stop screaming and take your punishment like a good widdle boy". What the hell? Can I fire this stupid brick of a man and get a trained father? Anyone worth their purchase cost should know about mixed messages. I mean Mom has it down. She does this good cop routine that's amazing. Complete with cookies and a good story. Oh and there he goes with the whistling again. Stop it already. Get yourself a tuner at least… that's supposed to be an E-flat. It's the damn "Friends" theme, not the rhythmic scraping of a broken record across a green chalkboard.

I rooted around for Mr Bunchkins. Where was that bear when I needed him? Damnit, he was definitely in the room yesterday. He better not have run away again. Really, how far could the damn thing walk without me. Ah, there he is, under the Play-doh reconstruction of New York City. Yeah, that was unfortunate. There's now little bits of Harlem stuck on Mr Bunchkins' ass. That definitely doesn't look good. It didn't help that he should have been wearing pants. Yeah, I'd torn them off to make a curtain for my Batcave out in the yard. Then Dad came by with the lawnmower. Boy was he not happy. It was almost worth the lost Batman to see Dad's face in response to the crunching sound and that awful burning plastic smell. And the grass got real high in the yard for a while after that. High enough to play jungle tiger with Mr Bunchkins. He'd keep running and I had such a good time being the tiger. He had to have stitches a couple of times too… we were pretty rough. But he's a really comfortable bear.

(an hour later)

Look I'm sorry. Oh, who am I kidding, no one is listening to me anyway. Dad's probably fallen asleep watching TV downstairs. I didn't mean to run away from school; I like it usually. But it was so boring at naptime. The rain meant that we didn't even have the option we usually did of playing in the sandbox that day… and I certainly had too much energy for sleeping. It was human body day and Ms Jenson had poked the kidney picture a dozen times already. I certainly didn't care what I looked like inside. Mom usually tells me I have a clean boy underneath all my dirt when I take a shower and that seems to be enough for her. So why do I need this kidney and liver stuff anyway. Well anyhow, I decided after Ms Jenson had closed the door for naptime that I was going outside. She couldn't stop me and mom usually lets me play in the rain anyhow. So I left through the window. The rain was welcome relief, until I got wet. Then it sucked. And I couldn't admit defeat and go back in, could I?

Well Dad works next door at the office and I wanted some of the hot cocoa he always has when I come over. But that would have been if I had a real Dad. But this untrained moron rushed me home and locked me in, without my cocoa. And he was whistling. Such a bad father, really.

Look, I REALLY need to go to the bathroom. RIGHT NOW. DAD!!! HELP! This isn't going to be good. I haven't wet myself in a long time. DAD! I'm banging on the door… wake up!

Oh look, Dad left a note under the door. Imagine that. He was sure sneaky. Let's see… "I'm going back to work, tiger! Take care. Dad." Oh look, how cute, he left a second note with a PS. I'll bet it says something about how he's working late too, just my luck.

"PS I'm sorry about locking you in earlier, but I've unlocked the door now. You were asleep." The postscript had been hastily scribbled.

The Expert

(Mine)

He closed the door behind him, pocketed the key, and walked off whistling. Jailers these days were so cocky, thinking that a set of modern steel bars gave them an almost carefree power over their prisoners. Steve knew better. And he was going to show them just how little bars actually mean to a master.

The first escape was simplicity itself. Steve had come in with a perfect long wire woven into his shaggy hair. A quick lock-pick and he was out. The lone guard, Marsden according to his nametag, was dozing. A Midwestern town holed up from the rain, didn't notice a shaggy man stashing an orange jumpsuit in the outside dumpster.

The next day, around noon, Steve strolled into the county jail, dressed in a fine wool suit, smoking a nice Cuban and clean shaven. He'd had some rather profitable times the night before; his prison boots had left muddy prints at every house on Main Street, it seemed. As Steve casually stripped down to his boxers and changed into the orange jumpsuit that they'd provided, he joked with an astonished Marsden. "I needed a shower and a shave, you know how it is. The rain was a welcome relief, until I got wet." He whistled as they led him to his cell.

A few weeks later, they'd gotten a new warden. A little while after that, on a warm Wednesday night, Steve was ready to make his second break. With a carefully secreted rock from the exercise yard and five years of experience pitching in little league, Steve tripped the alarm system. The jail was one of those newfangled electrical deals that double locked all the cells as soon as the alarm was tripped. One part of his excursion a month earlier was to switch a couple wires. His cell door clicked unlocked within an instant and he slipped out. Jackson came running, yelling for him to stop, reaching for his gun. It didn't help that he should have been wearing pants. Wednesday nights, as pretty much everyone in the jail knew, Jackson's lady friend, Samantha, came over. Steve had waited until her squealing had reached that particularly high note before pulling his little stunt and his timing had paid off splendidly. As Jackson turned a fantastic shade of red, Steve waltzed out, switched off the alarm, blew a kiss to a gasping Samantha, and liberated a few bills from the confines of a convenient wallet. Jackson resigned the next day. He was thoroughly embarrassed, while Steve changed into yet another orange jumpsuit, making obscenely suggestive gestures indicating a certain short length on camera.

Steve was under maximum security now. The county wasn't about to be a national laughing stock for a third time in a row. At the same time, they weren't going to bow in and send him over to the state prison. Instead, there was a 24 hour security detail pretty much right outside his cell and these new guys looked business. They just hadn't anticipated a little outside help. As Steve escaped through a freshly gaping hole in the prison's plaster roof, a single yellow note came fluttering down on top of the debris.

"Thanks for the jumpsuits and the housing guys. I hope you had as much fun as I did. PS. Please learn a new song to whistle other than I'm a little teapot." The postscript had been hastily scribbled.

Currently grooving to: Santana - Everybody's Everything

Just a note.

These stories are very unpolished, one-hour things. My friends' talent ... is like WOAH.

(Articulate, really).
--C.

Diane

(Mine)

"You never saw what hit you, did you?"

The words sledgehammered their way into my fractured skull. Somewhere between the pulsing hospital lights and the incessant Taiko drumming against my abused cranium, I realized that she actually expected a response. I could only manage a grunt.

"You knew you shouldn't drive after late nights in the OR. You know all about sleep deprivation. You're a doctor." The voice continued.

As the sixteen sets of fluorescent lights overhead slowly converged into four, I left the voice behind and set myself to the task of figuring out who this was and what she was doing here.

I was married, I think. I could certainly remember snippets of a wedding, and a lavish honeymoon in the Caribbean. I remember the lovely week of exotic shopping trips and even how thankful I was for Diane. That was her name -- a lovely, supple and sexy college senior who shouldn't have fallen for a balding fifty-year-old doctor. But she had. She relieved my fears constantly over the past year while we'd been dating. She'd supported me through long nights, doing her own studying in the hospital café. And yes, here she was at my bedside even though I could barely focus my eyes on the bright and vaguely familiar lights.

"I'm all bruised up from trying to drag you out from under that wreckage. You wouldn't speak… do you realize just how terrifying that was to me? You must never do that again." Diane kept talking, in that soft, slightly patronizing voice of hers and I drifted off into blackness, happy she was there.

Days later, they released me from my own hospital. By that time, I'd gotten back most of my memories, if none of my mobility. I was paralyzed from the waist down, my job as a surgeon was gone. And yet Diane was there pushing the wheelchair down the hospital ramp. I still couldn't remember much from the day of the accident, just some shadowy lights that forced me awake at night and caused the nurses (and a very sleepy Diane) to rush to my bedside. That will eventually pass, I was told. Diane patted my hand as I was lifted into the van.

That night, with Diane in her soft nightie curled up next to me, I finally felt safe. As Diane slipped out from my semi-conscious arms, it occurred to me that she was supposed to be driving me home that night. She had come all the way to the hospital just so I wouldn't be driving sleep deprived. I remember waking up to the click of my releasing seatbelt and the sudden lurch of the car. In almost slow motion I saw Diane tuck and roll out of the driver side door, as she steered the car into the oncoming semi, the headlights blinding.

I woke up screaming for the tenth night in a row.

Eleven Days

(from an amazingly talented Yune:)

You never saw what hit you, but the white blur that identifies itself as Dr. Herrins tells you when you wake up that it was a black sports car going over well over 100.

"Was the driver drunk?" you ask.

"No," he says, and in his voice you hear the clinical curiosity of a researcher. "But he'd recently taken a turn around the bend, if you know what I mean. His friends and family report that over the previous ten days, he'd been growing steadily more and more irrational. It culminated in the midnight ride that unfortunately caused your accident. He ended up dying shortly after the ambulance came. You're luckier."

You hurt too much to be angry at this madman who literally crashed into your life. Several major bones are broken, and there were internal injuries, although Dr. Herrins reassures you that now that your condition has stabilized, you're sure to recover. You'll be discharged in several months, and after that awaits a long regimen of physical therapy.

He sees how much the news depresses you. "Here's something that might cheer you up. Your parents and wife are here to see you, if you feel well enough for visitors."

You don't, not really, but you know that your loved ones must want the reassurance of talking to you while you're conscious, so you nod and they're sent in.

Your parents weep over you and have to be warned away from hugging you or holding your hand. It is a relief when they finally leave. Natasha sits quietly through the spectacle, then comes to the bedside once you two are alone. She is pale but brave, and helps you lift a hand to feel the baby kick.

"Do you remember any of it?" she asks after a long silence.

"No," you say, but you're lying; your body tenses as it recalls on its own the horror of that night. The memories are trickling back, like water through a crack in a dam. Flashes come to you later in the evening, after Natasha has kissed your cheek and departed, and you close your eyes to try to shut out the world.

Someone is dragging you out of the wreck. You turn your head, wanting to protest about how the asphalt is abrading you, only to stare into a ruined face, bloodied, flesh burnt, and still a rictus grin splitting its mouth. He is even more injured than you are. You have no idea where he has the strength to pull you out of the car.


Frost crawls along your bones. Even after you open your eyes, that terrible face seems to be grinning at you. You call for the nurse and demand something to help you sleep.

Instead, you dream. Sinuous, shadowy shapes twine around you. The next morning you feel more exhausted instead of rested.

More visitors over the next week and a half. Your boss assures you that your job will still be there for you when you get out of the hospital, and that the company misses your expertise. Your parents use more Kleenex. When you tell her that your sleep is troubled, Natasha sings you a lullaby, as though you were a child. It doesn't help. You dream of black worms burrowing through flesh, and at first you think it's a corpse, perhaps that of the other man, but with a shock that sends you hurling back into raw-throated consciousness, you realize that the body is your own.

And during the daytime, beyond the endless parade of well-wishers, your mind keeps re-constructing what happened during the accident.

"Get help, call 911," you gasp, wondering whether your cell phone survived the crash. But the man ignores you. "Eleven days, eleven days," he says, as though it's a chant. "They take eleven days, you see. And this would've been my eleventh night." He starts to laugh, and the sound grates against your ears as though nails were being dragged across your skull.

The lawyer of the man who crashed into you comes by as well. "I wasn't just Eric's lawyer," he says with an awkwardness unusual to his profession. "I was his friend, too. I just wanted to let you know that of course you'll be compensated in full for what happened. Eric's family agrees that it's what he would have wanted. He was a gentle man, truly. We were all shocked when we heard. But he had started changing in disturbing ways, just a couple of weeks before..."

"Changing how?" you ask, intrigued despite yourself.

"He was growing paranoid. Going to the doctors and insisting on full medical exams, which of course came up with nothing. He was at the prime of his life and in great physical shape. And he started refusing to sleep with his fiancée because, he said, he was having nightmares and didn't want to wake her. He started researching parasites. In the autopsy, they also found evidence that he had cut his own arms with a knife, and there were some other strange wounds." He lifts his hands in a helpless gesture.

A suspicion clouds the back of your mind. You try to deny its existence. Then the lawyer says:

"It's amazing how fast the mind can deteriorate. In only eleven days..."

"You said he was doing research," you say abruptly.

He blinks. "Yes."

"Can I see whatever books or articles he collected? They might be of interest to me."

His brows are furrowed in puzzlement, but he nods. "You know it's hard to deny you anything. Just don't tell me that these strange obsessions are contagious." He chuckles weakly.

That is exactly your fear. Your flesh crawls. Or is it something inside your flesh...?

You start asking to meet everyone who knew Eric. You ask them embarrassing, personal questions that they answer anyway. You hear your parents whispering in the hallway about how you must be questioning why this happened to you, that you're investigating the source of the accident. They're unhappy about this turn of mind, but Dr. Herrins says that this is your way of taking control when you're helpless.

The lawyer delivers the books. You read voraciously and refuse to see anyone except the nurse who brings you painkillers and adjusts the reading stand for you.

You start asking for drugs to keep you awake, because the dreams don't stop. Neither do the memories.

He finally stops laughing. "They must be starving right now," he says in elation. "Because they feed on fear, you know. And God knows I'm not afraid right now. I welcome death with open arms."

There are wasps that lay eggs in burrows, along with an insect paralyzed by their sting. When the eggs hatch, the resulting larvae eat the insect. Many parasites feast on humans instead, since our dietary habits lead us to ingest other animals that are infected.

But what if it were more than a taste for human flesh? What if something preferred human prey precisely for the one thing that separates us from other species-our minds? Our psychological depth? Our fear?

And thus the dreams.

Natasha goes into labor early. Dr. Herrins frowns-although he is always frowning these days as he listens to you and marks your chart-and says that the shock of your accident may have contributed. The premature baby, a daughter, is placed in incubation, and everyone prays and hopes. Except for you.

"Don't you care?" Natasha asks you over the phone, crying for the first time.

"I won't get to see her anyway, even if she lives," you say.

There is a shocked silence. You babble into it.

"He gave them to me. And they take eleven days, you see. Eleven days to incubate. And last night, I woke up screaming for the tenth night in a row."

The Writer

(by Rose)

His tea had long since grown cold, but he drank it anyway. As he drained the dregs from the chipped glass, he slowly slid off his stool and out of his long-held spot at the bar. He tossed some change in the direction of the heavily pierced student who had been bringing him drinks all night and limped out of the repugnantly modern glass and chrome diner, trying to shake his foot awake. Picking the street that seemed most likely to head east, he set off with a purposeful stride, the kind of eyes straight ahead, no nonsense pace meant to keep any unsavory characters at bay.

Just as the sun was beginning to rise over the odd mixture of ugly square apartment buildings and crumbling historical monuments and he was beginning to despair of ever reaching his destination, the fog from the early morning sea began to envelop him. With relief, he sank into the sand, opened his coat to pull from a pocket a tiny beat-up, leather-bound notebook and the pen he had swiped from the travel agency, and began to scribble furiously.

It seemed that he had been writing for only a few minutes when the bright noon sun was obscured by large dark clouds and the downpour started without warning. Unable to maintain the flood of words that had come to him for the first time in a long time, but unwilling to leave the peacefulness he found in the water surrounding him, he sat steeled against the wind and rain, allowing the elements to move him into a trance and drift him down memory lane.

It'd been years since he'd been to France, but he still remembered every street sign, every cafe, every word learned, every second of that one fateful day, from his first step off the train to the last words whispered in his ear as he floated off to sleep. The young greenhorn had ended up in Nice on a whim, an adventure picked by a stray dart and a much abused map, and as he plunged into the warm sunshine, he felt certain that lady luck was on his side.

He settled himself at the first small table, at a sleepy sidewalk cafe, and watched as the rest of the tourists, his day's travel companions, milled into the town, buzzing about the quaintness and the salty air.
Shunning his menu, he smiled at the bright-eyed eager girl who came to take his order and enquired, "Is there anything in here as sweet as you?

As she blushed and stuttered, he straightened and barked out his order, "Coffee, black, and pernod, just a little water."

"Ah, poor boy," called a lilted laughing voice from behind. He turned, just as heard the scrape of another wicker wire chair being pulled up beside him. "You think you admire purity and innocence, but you can't stand the dull-wittedness of the girls fresh from the farm."
"But if she had joined in your parrying, you would have thought her hardened, rude, all too boringly world weary," she said. The woman could have been anywhere between twenty and fifty, dignified but svelte, and dressed in an impeccable traveling suit. She continued on, not letting him get a word in, "You fancy yourself a writer, don't you? You have that air of clever self-importance about you. Give me your most recent story."

Feigning an air of confidence, as if being challenged in such a manner by such a woman was an everyday occurrence, he passed over his best piece, a detective story with a charming, mysterious, standoffish hero and an equally strong, clever female counterpart, exactly the type he wished he could find. Somehow, he thought, he maintained an unruffled mien as she read, skipping back and forth between pages, pursing lips, clucking, laughing fiendishly. When she finally came to the last dog-eared page, he was on pins and needles. Two cups of coffee had come and gone, while she nursed her red wine and contemplated.

"Have you ever been with a woman?" She nailed him with a stare.

"Of course!" he protested.

"Was it what you wanted it to be?"

She seemed to see right through him. It was hard to tell whether an affirmative or honesty would be more worldly, more right.

"No answer needed. Your problem is that you're too young, too idealistic. You want things to be grandiose, meaningful, perfect. Maybe that will happen. Maybe not. But either way, you're not getting it on paper. Wit is that which was often thought but ne'er so well expressed."

Four AM.

(by Cheng)

His tea had long since grown cold, but he drank it anyway. It was bitter and strong and he gulped it down without a second thought. The inside of the cup was stained the color of a stale banana, attesting to the long sad hours he'd spent at this desk. He made a mental note to wash it, when he actually got around to the strewn dishes and plates that covered the kitchen table. It'd been a week of long nights. Again, the small hand on his watch pointed down and to the right, the little pips that actually indicated the time were long since rubbed away. His head throbbed. The page was still blank.

It wasn't that he didn't have much to write. His head swarmed with sentences, words and phrases, just like when he was younger -- when he'd churned out book after book. Back then, he'd even gotten an occasional mention in the New York Times Book Review section. That was twenty-two years ago. He wasn't a good writer, not better than most, but he wrote. And that meant that phone calls from Tom, his editor, usually told him that a check was in the mail - not that he was weeks behind on his latest manuscript. He grasped for a sentence, just to get him going. He extended a mental hand, but pulled it back immediately. The hand was so dead, like a withered branch covered in old dried moss. He shuddered, and far away, he registered the rattling sound of a pen hitting the linoleum. At fifty-three, he wasn't that old. But his eyes were firmly pressed shut and he didn't look.

He hunted around for a happier thought. Long ago, he recognized that as his defense mechanism, the way that he escaped from the present time by hiding out in his mind. Back then, of course, those thoughts translated to words on a piece of paper and those words earned him money. "Idealistic," they'd called his work. It wasn't far from the truth; he'd created an ideal world in his own mind. One where he had kids; one where Stacy hadn't left after discovering how unromantic writers actually were; one where people actually lived their dreams of romance novel freedom and went on lavish European cruises.

It'd been years since he'd been to France. He'd gone with Stacy after his first book deal. They'd spent a real honeymoon laughing down the Seine and drinking far too much. It didn't seem to matter that they were pairing the red wine with the delicate oysters, even if their shocked garcon tried repeatedly to change their minds. It wasn't as if they knew what he was saying anyhow and they'd laughed off his protesting tone in a way only silly Americans can. He wrote nothing on that trip.

He opened his eyes; the world had righted itself. Impulsively, he moved to check his watch but didn't read it. The time was irrelevant.
Bending down, he retrieved the fallen pen, dismissing quickly the click of his aging spine. He felt slightly better and wasn't going to lose that feeling. He had decided what to write. It was to be a memoir, an autobiography of sorts. It wasn't the paperback romance that Tom wanted; but it was sure to have enough fantasy to make him happy.

While the water was boiling for another cup of tea, he pondered how he was going to write it. "Write what you know best, first" was the adage of his freshman English professor, and he wondered what that
would be. A mischievous grin spread across his face. He would write
from the end; start from the last paragraph and work towards the first. That'd be sure to get him writing, and maybe bring out some of his old wit.

He sipped his hot tea, the momentary scalding being a fantastic jolt.
He wrote the first sentences of the last paragraph without even thinking. As he lifted his cup to take the second sip, he reread what he just wrote, as was his habit.

There was a crash and hot tea spilled into his lap.

"At fifty-three, I finally had the courage to kill myself." With a start, he realized, wit is that which was often thought but ne'er so well expressed.

Courtship

(by Yune)

His tea had long since grown cold, but he drank it anyway and smiled through its bitterness at Elizabeth. The girl sat demurely across from him with her eyes lowered, but every so often she would glance up at him through her lashes with the hint of a promise on her lips. That promise had kept Jean-Pierre in the Baylors' parlor for the past hour despite over-brewed tea and stale biscuits and the frigid presence of Mrs. Baylor.

He'd met the son of the family on a dig in Guatemala, both of them archaeology students. He had become fast friends with Robert, enough to plan to accompany him to his home in England on one of their breaks. Jean-Pierre had no home of his own worth speaking of. It'd been years since he'd been to France, and his parents had long since disowned him. He was most at ease in the rain forest anyway, with dirt on his face and tools in his hands. Not with these formal phrases tripping his tongue and this dark suit stifling his movements as he expressed his regrets about the accident on site that had claimed Robert's life just before break.

You must come anyway, Elizabeth had written on behalf of the family. Robert told us so much about you. Then a line that had been, he hoped, entirely on her behalf despite its plural: We want to meet you.

Robert had told him that his sister was "a lovely girl. You'll like her, Jean-Pierre." And he did, very much indeed, to the point where Robert's death, once a painful knot in his heart, was easing away into forgetfulness.

"Mama, please." Elizabeth put a hand on her mother's arm, interrupting the list of Robert's accomplishments. "I want to hear about what Robert did on the dig."

Mrs. Baylor slammed her teacup and saucer onto the table; through some miracle, the ceramic did not shatter. "That dig killed him!" She rose and rushed out of the room.

"Mama never approved of Robert going into archaeology," Elizabeth said, sounding unconcerned. "But I think that's how he would have liked to go. Not this young, of course, but involved in a project. Poor Robert. He tried very hard to be a proper older brother. Always introducing me to his friends out of the fear that I would become a spinster at this rate." She smiled. "But I didn't like any of them. Men these days... I do have my standards, you know."

He wondered if she was warning him off. But the curve of her mouth was impish. "So what do you look for in men?" he asked.

She tilted her head and thought for a moment. "Directness," she decided. "And wit."

Jean-Pierre swallowed. Wit was not his forte. Ancient artifacts required no clever words. But her eyes were a coquette's, and her mouth so inviting, and directness he could do. Gamely, he spoke of the two things that had been on his mind ever since he entered this place: "These biscuits and tea are horrible. Would you care for dinner elsewhere?"

Her smile widened. "Very much. I've been wishing you would say something like that. If you'd done so earlier, I wouldn't have had to be the one to chase Mama off, and we wouldn't have had to sit here for the past hour and a half."

He wished so too, now. But not too bad a start, he reflected as he held the door open for Elizabeth. After all, wit is that which was often thought but ne'er so well-expressed.

It had to be said

(by Cheng)

His tea had long since grown cold, but he drank it anyway, staring out through his dark glasses. It'd been years since he'd been to France, but he knew these streets like the back of his hand. He planned long and carefully for this day. As the cab stopped on the Champs Elysee, he jumped out and sprinted the rest of the way to the Palace. A good spy never walks. Twenty minutes later, he was jumping from a lasered hole in the ceiling of the presidential office. As he landed on the big center desk, he whispered a single word to the single representative of the French people.

"Cowards."

Wit is that which was often thought but ne'er so well expressed.

(This awful piece was the result of my trying to fit the lines into as short a space as possible)

Eight times

(Mine)
He was always watching the sky, hoping for a sign that the war had ended, but again the faint flashes of light in the distance told of exploding bombs and dying people. He rested his head in his hands and silently prayed. Again, his sister was out there in the war-torn mess of Denmark, flirting with the strict border patrol, every night bringing more innocent Jewish children out, over the border to their little farmhouse in Sweden. Every time the distant booming sounded, his hands clenched -- he saw, in mind's eye the lovely long brown hair of his twin sister being thrown against some shattered skeleton of a building.

She had been a model, back in the days of peace. Never quite famous enough to be the first targeted by the Nazi forces, but pretty enough to entice some young recruit, fresh out of German propaganda schools to let her and her "baking" over to the other side. She had a nurse's uniform and on the return trip, she actually had a nice little warm loaf of bread for the kind soldier (and it rotated daily) so that he'd let her through with more "flour" on the next run. So far it'd worked perfectly, and he'd been surrounded by now seven young Jewish kids, all squeezed in the one nice warm bed up in the loft. They were sleeping soundly, but he waited, for her and for the eighth.

She was running late. He was going to be worried; there was nothing she could do to help that, but the baby wouldn't stop crying. She'd fed him, from her own breast, but it wouldn't quiet. She certainly couldn't smuggle a crying bag of flour over the border; no amount of eyelash batting would allow that. At the strike of ten, the gates closed and she'd have to spend the night on the wrong side of the barbed wire fence. Spending the night with a crying child and the hollow faces of the imprisoned, the people trapped in the ghetto, yellow stars sewn to their shirts. It was almost too much to bear, how many people she couldn't save. It was nine-thirty… she'd have to do this the hard way.

She swaddled the months old boy, still whimpering, as warmly as she could, and tied it securely to her chest. She may have to run, even if she'd hoped it wouldn't come to that. She left her building, seeming to come from the hospital, to keep up appearances, and headed for the guard tower. The new guard was young in his teens, that at least made it easier. She put on the sobbing nurse story.

"Look, junger Sohn, please… I pulled the baby from his mother, a fellow nurse. She'd been hurt by one of them," she spat, her disgust not for the Jews but for the Germans, but he'd never know that. "I have a grandmother in the farmhouse on the other side, she's got milk; and you know how hard that is to actually come by here in Denmark. You've got to let me out and get this baby some food."

She noticed how his eyes lit up at the mention of the word milk and pressed it further, "She may even have chocolate," she whispered. That did it; at the promise of sweets, the boy, he was barely sixteen, opened the gate. "I'll be back," she said, blowing him a kiss. He looked longingly after her.

It was almost midnight by the time she got back. She sank down into her cozy easy chair and sighed. "That was far harder a mission than I'd ever hope to do again."

Mission

(Yune)

He was always watching the sky, hoping for a sign that the war had ended. When he had been younger, the distant nighttime fireworks had been to him a spectacle of beauty; now he knew they were the death-flares of ships, an end to the brutal battles wrongly full of color and light. His sister was on one of those ships-tall, graceful Erin, whom he mostly remembered as a smiling face and strong arms enclosing him on her rare leaves. He missed her, but knew she was needed out there.

Suddenly there was an explosion high above him, far larger than any he had seen before, and then a string of smaller ones following. His throat closed. That had been the station that orbited the planet.
And the others--had one of them been Erin's ship? And then one of the distant points of light was no longer distant as it streaked downward in the sky. It was going to crash-right there, on their land. He stood there staring for several thundering heartbeats until he realized that he should run. He had only taken a few steps before the sudden blast threw him off his feet and flung him toward the house and into darkness.

When he recovered consciousness, he was lying on his bed. Sitting next to him was Erin.
He shouted her name and she stood up to give him her familiar smile and embrace.
"Was that your ship?" he demanded.
She nodded. "Sorry for the crash landing. I was running out of fuel."
"As long as you're back home," he said.
She hesitated. "I can't stay for long," she said. "This is the first place they'll look for me."
"Why are they looking for you?"
"I destroyed the station," she said calmly.
"But the rebels have been trying to do that for years!"
"I know. That's why they finally found someone on our side to do it."
The world seemed unbalanced. "Why did you do it, Erin?"

"The war had gone on too long," she said. "I don't think you can even remember a time when we had peace. It's time we started over, and by now, they have the resources to do it for us. In the end, what does it matter which empire claims us as theirs on the star-maps?"

There was a gun under his pillow that he kept in case looters ever came by. He reached for it now. He wasn't sure he would be able to use it on his sister. But she wasn't his sister. She was a traitor.
Even so, it was difficult to make his fingers curl around the gun.
Harder than anything he had done or ever would do, he thought. But he would do it. "So you destroyed our last defense," he said, hoping impossibly for a denial.

"I did it. It was hard, but I did it." She sank down into her cozy easy chair and sighed. "That was far harder a mission than I'd ever hope to do again."

Currently grooving to: Stanford Talisman - Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Why Yune + I are weird.

More improv game results:

Timmy walked over to his bike that his brother had crashed into the wall. "Damn!" He swore and examined the bent remains. Hoisting the crushed wheel over his shoulder, he went back to the house. "Steven! You bastard, come here and see what you've done!" After a moment, a footstep resounded from the basement. "That you left in front of my lab?" Steven asked. "I thought there was a burglar when there was actually not any. I grabbed the bike and hurled it toward the shadow. My aim wasn't accurate, I ended up hitting the wall of the garage. Sorry." Beaker in hand, he bent his arm and flipped the frame of the wheel against the wall to shake the dent out. "Maybe I can fix it," he offered. Timmy stared at his brother and snarled. He raised an angry fist and shouted, "Maybe!? You'd only maybe fix it? I'll expect full compensation for this!" Steven calmly poured the contents of the beaker on the wheel. There was a great crunching sound as the metal suddenly snapped into a bunch of pieces. Slowly, the rest of the wheel formed a perfect circle as Timmy gaped at the transformation. Grabbing the beaker he doused his torn jeans, hoping it would effect a similar miraculous repair. "NOOOO!" screamed Steven lunging for his brother, but it was too late. Flames burst from the wet cloth. "You fool! It should only be used on bikes. Now, I have no choice but to watch you burn, since I never could create a formula to extinguish these flames." Timmy shrieked as the chemical ate away at his jeans. Minutes later, Timmy's charred jeans were fallen but his boxer saved his dignity. Steven snickered. "Good choice in wearing silk boxers with bikes on them because the chemical doesn't affect bikes that way."

Currently grooving to: Stanford Talisman - Beulah