THE DARK IS MOVING IN THE CORNER

            It started out so simply. A car ride to nowhere, someone singing, music blaring. Someone passes me a bottle and I drink from it.

            As the bottle leaves my lips, my world screeched to sudden unexpected halt and something was killed by the hood of the van.

            I pushed someone off of me. We were upside down in a ditch. The windows are plastic and cannot be broken and the doors are jammed shut, and we are all drunk.

            Or we were. The driver and the passenger are pinned, bloody, and dead.  They are upside down, their blood oozing into their hair. Someone else, the only one of us who was wearing a seatbelt, has been strangled by it. She slowly spins, haunting, her eyes are open. There are three of us left, I think, scared sobbing, desperate, and completely wasted.

            Oh god. Something outside just moved, the darkness itself. It’s creeping to the smashed front window of the party van. All is so silent. It’s bigger than everything else, the horrid silence. The silent van driven by corpse is being encroached upon by darkness.

            We’re all so scared. Rain starts to pour down outside, forcing the approaching darkness back, then it’s gone. It returns with cops, sirens beating my brain, lights too bright.

            They open the bottom of the van, and screeching erupts. I want it to stop. The two left with me are dead. I’m the one screaming but I can’t stop. I am pulled out. They tell me my friends aren’t dead, just unconscious. I think they’re my friends, I don’t think I’ve seen them before. I’m screaming again. The cops call an ambulance; the driver, the passenger, and the seatbelt girl are strapped onto covered stretchers. I try to dance to lighten the mood, but can’t move and I fall in to the darkness from the corner.

            I wake in a circle, my brain remembers nothing, and I’m scared. People in diapers strapped into chairs surround me. The sign above them says Welcome To The Institution. A woman I don’t know comes and tells me she’s something called my “mom” she smells strange so I scream. She starts to cry and I’m so scared she leaves and I am so relived, I take advantage of my diaper.

Irrational Fears

They said I’d won something, a contest I hadn’t entered. But I go anyway, it’s free, I’ve got nothing to lose. On my way there, I avoid every third sidewalk square and I jump every three steps. I hate that number; I’m convinced that it will someday be the death of me.

            I arrive and am greeted by three threes next to the door. God, I’m not sure I can do this. After taking a breath to steady my self, I close my eyes and reach for the knob. My fingers wrap around a bizarre shape and when I open my eyes: a triangle. I stifle a shriek, but I start hyperventilating. I go in and run to the end of the long triangular hallway, trying not to cry. I reach a door, a triangle, with a triangular knob. Suddenly it splits into three sections, and three hands push me from behind. I’m sealed into a massive pyramid, with three giant triangular tiles on each wall. Another girl is in the room, I see her from the corner of my eye, and I’m huddled in the corner, trying to avoid the horrible threes. I can’t breath. They let the other girl out and I run to the door, screaming, begging. They seal it behind her and the walls start to close, they grow smaller, the threes are going to kill me.

A last conversation with the dead

She was perfect. I miss her so much. There is nothing in this world I could possibly want more than my best friend back. She was my sister in every way but blood, and one secret night, we fixed even that. And it was in blood that Savanna died.

            We used to sneak out to this bench at night and meet, just to wait for something book-worthy to happen to us. Aliens, fairies, crime, anything worth waiting for.

            I snuck out here tonight. Not very well, but my parents don’t care anymore, if it means I’ll leave my room. I had to come back to our crime scene, one more time. I said that to myself two months ago, six, maybe even a year age. I just can’t stay away. My butt and hers have left permanent groves in this spot, marking the number of times we sat here, waiting. God, I still can’t believe she’ll never meet me here again.

            While I sit here and contemplate, I notice something, caution tape. Did it really take one of us gone forever for something to happen here? And sitting in the center, spread out reading a book on a blanket, is Savanna.

“Sav?”

She looks up and smiles like I thought I’d never se again. She pats the blanket next to her as she dog-eras the book page.

            “Hey Girl! How goes it?”

I can’t imagine what my face must have looked like as I ducked under the caution tape and hugged her as I thought I could never do again. She’d been dead and in the ground two years, yet she smells just as she used to, and hasn’t aged a day.

            “Sav, what are you doing here? I thought you were dead!”

“I am!” she laughs. “And you have no idea how free it is! I don’t have to worry about my weight, how pretty I am, grades, nothing! Ready Watch!” and with that she leapt into midair and hung suspended. I gape at her.

“ Sav… It’s been two years, if you could come back, why didn’t you come sooner? And what happened that night?”

Savanna looks up at the moon that hangs as it did the night she died, full bright, and beautiful. It wasn’t supposed to be there at all tonight and whispers, “I was so hungry Stell, so hungry. I was scared and I thought I was alone and imperfect. I just had to leave.”

M stories. Look for words that start with M

M

Montgomery didn’t start it. It wasn’t his fault. But it didn’t matter now; all that mattered was getting as far way from Maud as possible. When someone goes mad, and ends up murdered, well, it wasn’t his fault. But he could still see her, burned into his retinas. The horrid screaming, the blood, and the silence more painful than the screams. And yet, the metropolis never stopped, unaware that its greatest gift was gone. Unaware that it’s doom was sprinting away on moccasined feet. Montgomery stepped into the middle of Times Square. This was it. A taxi came bearing down on him, horn blaring. In the instant before impact, Montgomery dissipated.

M

Rage clouded her vision. It was all she felt, the fury. It controlled Maud completely. Her brother had abandoned her in her greatest hour of need. A scream bubbled up inside her. She let it erupt, soaring into the light polluted city sky. It flew over rooftops, stopped time, but not the one thing that it couldn’t stop were the moccasins that were speeding away with her life. Her heart and soul were in the bag they carried, and her shriek followed, haunting the thief. How DARE he! The agony set in then, and even the force of her rage couldn’t keep it at bay. The hurt beat out the mad, and slowly she turned her head, the blood no longer pumping out of the gaping hole in her chest. Her fading eyes followed the metropolis lights as the light in them went out.

Some short stories, Enjoy!

Are blackberries crunchy? Dylan explains food good-again. He is just kind, like Mom. No one puts quiet right stress, true, unless very wise. Xavier yells Zimbabwe.

Abby babbles crap down, ears full. God, how I just kissed Liam. Manny now opens portals. Quiet rain sizzles tar under vans. Watch Xavier’s yard zoom.

Ziza yells xylophone wishes very underdressed, towards sun. Rocks quivering pushes open new moments like kites. Just if he got free, even death couldn’t cage belief again.