His true love had been the passion for money. Money that was tactile, which he could hold. He was a man of the flesh, what he owned had to be embodied as well. He didn’t do something with his money, he made. More and more. Buildings rising high in the sky with full elevator walls filled with the buttons of floors. Golf clubs, artificial island resorts, he built and built. He still needed more. The...

It was the ocean. My first love, that is. Its sweeping waves were my lullaby, its roaring storms my opportunity, and its riches were, well, my riches. And, as first loves go, I thought it would last forever. As it turns out, forever is miserably short, and, as it turns out, there is currently a mutiny on my pirate ship.

“Now, let’s not get too hasty, Ollie!” I yelled into the freezi...

My wealth tended to precede me, although that was to be expected from a town the size of Hansville, Washington. It was hard to be bothered by the town talk in a place so beautiful; adorned with dense, lush forest accompanied by a coast plagued by biting winds that made you realize a new appreciation for warmth.

I suppose my name is of importance to my story, I am Clarissa. I grew up on the E...

When Arika was eight, her parents told her she could be anything she wanted to be. They claimed the most important thing was to find a job that would make her content. If she worked hard, she could be a doctor, a dentist, or a lawyer. When they saw none of them piqued their daughter’s interest, they dropped the issue. She was still a young child. There was still a decade left for them to find Arik...

Lance pulled up in the driveway and stared at the cottage in front of him. The woman who had called him had simply said the house needed “some work”, but this place was a disaster. Without even doing a good inspection, he could see the porch was falling down along with the front steps, and the roof would need replacing. He sighed, hauled himself out of the truck and reached in for his yellow pa...

“Empty? What do you mean my account is empty!?” I pounded my fist on the table, glaring at my secretary.

“There seems to have been some mistake…” she faltered nervously, pushing her glasses up as she ruffled through papers.

“I don’t pay you to make mistakes,” I snapped, clenching my jaw and dropping into an overstuffed office chair.

“Sir,” Janet began hesitantly, obviously fright...

We stand in rows, the last five of us, the survivors. Each of us is clothed in dark robes, our faces a maze of wrinkles and sweat. Non of us dare to breath our hearts heavily thudding from within our chests. We all know that there will be no second place that the only way to survive is to win. The only way to survive is to kill the others and we are all desperate enough to do so.

The board of ju...

She looked in the mirror. The face of failure glared back at her. There was no mistaking it, she despised herself. The girl stared at her reflection, her wonky nose, her thinning hair, her sunken eyes. It was the face of someone much older than her, someone who had experienced much pain. Everything she had worked for lay in heaps at her feat, the regret stung like a needle.

She had made the concl...

She was a fierce ice queen, manipulating the patriarchy to play by her rules, creating the new status quo, demanding respect and earning her keep by not allowing any man to belittle her place.

Growing up, her mother had always pushed her to win the game: hustle the hustlers, so that she will never have to rely on a man for survival. Utilize being the underdog, make them anticipate weakness and fa...

An eviction notice hangs on my golden door, no car in the driveway, every drop drained from the pool, my desk just sitting there. Empty. Evicted.

How could they do this? I literally run this state! How could they do this? Well, that’s there problem. I have plenty of money to last a lifetime. Good luck finding another manager to replace me. Their loss! What were they even thinking? Who co...