You murdered me. Tore my heart apart with your cold fingers. Your mask slipped and I noticed—like a death mask hiding a rotting corpse. It terrified me, but I forgave you. You did it so well, almost flawlessly. I began to wonder if all those stories about crazy ex-girlfriends were true? No. Truth was not hidden under that…facade. It was a lid, pressing down, suffocating anything real between us.

...

Alex was ordinary—expediently so.

Except when he drank exactly two and a half drinks of cheap whiskey. And only two times a day, spaced generously apart. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It simply was, and he accepted it. It was a gift he didn’t abuse lightly.

He carefully considered every moment he chose to use his power. Was it worth it? It had its limits. He st...

I couldn’t help staring. She started a little over a month ago. The only server at the small diner. She was the essence of beauty. Perfect features sure to make Aphrodite herself jealous. She was intelligent. I had overheard her explaining thermodynamics to a man who questioned why his coffee wasn’t as hot as he preferred. I smiled at the thought. She was the smartest girl I knew. The prettiest. I...

I perished—but that wasn’t the end.

I lived on, a shell of former man.

I couldn’t win, so I went on ahead

Leaving myself behind—to belong again....

Jeremiah was sitting at the top of his watchtower overseeing the third quadrant of the western wall. His keen eyes were his greatest asset, as he possessed neither brains nor brawn, and had no particular skills to speak of. However, his eyesight was an extremely valuable trait in the role of Observer. The wind blew lightly and he looked around. There hadn’t been any activity for several days, whic...

The shining orb of burning fire began its slow descent into the earth. The atmosphere slowly filtering out the shorter, much hotter rays of light, gradually bringing the temperature down and shifting the neutral daylight to fiery dusk. The sky turned into tangerines and strawberries, and the clouds into cotton candy. Shadows stretched and contorted, distorting the world into a surreal landscape of...

“Tonight will be our last sunset. You will never see me again.” The strange ethereal inky cloud of smoke said in an echoey underwater voice.

“What? Why do you say that? Why are you always so dramatic?” The small unusual girl sitting next to it asked, almost flippant, trying to hide her concern. Her white hair shone gold in the sunset, her large pupil-less eyes reflected pearlescent. Her desert t...

What world is this? Nothing is familiar. Where is my comforting embrace of heat and sand and dry air? Was I dead? Was hell the opposite of everything ever described? Blinding white, icy demon fingers clawing, a dead hand gripping my lungs, particles of pale sky quickly turning to water on my skin. The stiffness of my fingers slowly extending to my wrists and from my toes up to my ankles, I must be...

He stumbled through the dense underbrush of the emerald green mountain. Cursing under his breath he picked himself up off the ground and trudged ahead. He desperately wished he had a brush-knife. His sword was too long and heavy and his dagger was too short. He cursed again as thorns ripped through his trousers into his thigh. He paused and looked up, trying to determine how much time he had befor...