Drabble

If you would like to submit a drabble (a short work of game-related fiction exactly 100 words), please @mail Queens with your submission, the title, the name you would like it to appear under and which category you feel it belongs best in.

Challenge Drabble for October 2018's the topic is Books.

316 String Theory drabbles written — and counting.


Authors

Abby (19)

Adel (2)

Anonymous (14)

Asi (1)

Astor (1)

Audrey (2)

Aviators (1)

Barbara (1)

Bao-Wei (3)

Bella (3)

Benji (3)

Bolivar (1)

Cardinal (2)

Calvin (3)

Cash (1)

Claire (2)

Colette (4)

Cooper (2)

Corbin (3)

Dajan (1)

Danko (2)

Daphne (4)

Deckard (6)

Delia (2)

Delilah (21)

Eileen (15)

Elisabeth (2)

Emily (1)

Evan (1)

Faye (1)

Francois (7)

Gabriel (3)

Gillian (12)

Hannah (2)

Helena (6)

Howard (2)

Huruma (9)

Ingrid (2)

Iris (1)

Jane (1)

Jenny (1)

JJ (2)

Jonathan (1)

Joseph (3)

Joshua (2)

Judah (2)

Kaitlyn (1)

Kaylee (21)

Kincaid (2)

Lancaster (1)

Lene (2)

Lexington (1)

Logan (4)

Lynette (3)

Magnes (1)

McRae (1)

Melissa (32)

Meredith (1)

Monica (1)

Murdoch (1)

Nadira (1)

Nick (1)

Nicole (1)

Nora (3)

Odessa (4)

Pandora (2)

Peyton (3)

Quinn (1)

Raith (3)

Robyn (1)

Roderick (2)

Ruiz (2)

Ryans (9)

Sable (2)

Stef (1)

Sylar (1)

Tasha (3)

Tavisha (1)

Teo (8)

Tess (1)

Veronica (2)

Walter (2)


Early Draft

by Francois

As fast as a blink, this latest petty disagreement is ended, because Francois impatiently steals the few pages of manuscript out of Teo's hand and leaves a thin red line scored between thumb and forefinger.

They both curse about it in staggered order. Francois is very sorry, mumbling apology against Teo's hand, which he'd gathered to himself immediately. Typed sheets on the ground, now.

They don't talk about it. Little healing kisses turn to teeth nipping the ends of fingers, knees pushed aside for kneeling.

In the final draft, Teo notes that the troublesome paragraph in question has been cut.

Early Blight

by Teo

The first year, Teo sucks at farming. He rants about quitting. Francois takes no pleasure in his husband's frustration, but he just— doesn't share Teo's despair.

Then Spring turns over. When Francois drives in, Teo comes out running. He shouts: "Wanna see something amazing?"

He does.

It's a baby goat, newborn. White legs, black eyepatch. Hooves that go, badok!

Afterward, Teo's so playful. He climbs Francois' back with kisses, slow, sucking on each harder than the last. He lifts Francois' hair to place the final one; it tickles. Francois has to wonder how much of this joy is for him.

Every Night

by Kaylee

Every night that she is home, it’s the same.
Night, Mom.
“Night, Emmy”

Every night, she’s never really thought about it.
“Night Kaylee.”
“Night, baby.”

Every night wasn’t like tonight.
“Night, mommy.”
“Night, sweetie.”

Every night she’s done what had been expected of her, but then it all changed. Tonight felt different.

She still loved them so much, but…

Standing in the doorway of her room, with tears of guilt and pain in her eyes, looking at the man she’s loved for almost a decade, she utters the words she never thought she’d ever say:

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Eight To Five Friendship

by Asi

"«I called you as a friend.»"

"«Asi, I don't know what you want me to do.»"

"«Keep track of what I've told you, on paper how you do. If something … happens, bring the information to light then. They'll undoubtedly escape, but at least they'll be outed.»"

As a friend, I'd rather do something before it gets that dangerous.»"

"«Gen-chan, who is that?»" It's a groggy, female voice in the background. Asi stills, waiting for his response to it.

"… 行かなきゃ,テツヤマくん."

She looks off, out the window. "«Go, then.»"

Friendship was more of an 8 to 5 gig with Genki, anyway.

Message Saved

by Emily

Curled up on a well-worn recliner, Emily stares down at her phone, eyes out of focus. Her thumb brushes the center of the screen, the message reflecting off her irises.

She takes in half a breath several times, like she's preparing to talk herself through the situation, only to lapse back into silence each time. Turning the phone on its side, she scratches her forehead with one corner, displaying its message briefly to the world.

«to: 212-200-7307»

I'm sorry.

With a palm swipe across one side of her face, she backs out of the prompt.

«Message saved as draft»

Pretend Not to Hear

By Kaylee

I stand at the front of the room; slides clicking by.

Before me, people in crisps suits stare at me while I talk. Potential investors.

But they don't see me, they only see what I am.

A telepath…

I pretend not to hear. The doubt and the distrust.

Oh God, what if she hears me?

I wonder how many others she manipulated?

Never once does it show that I can hear their fear. That it calls to me.

Whispers dark secrets to me.

All they see is my smile, while I struggle within.

«You could make them love you.» No!

Spin of a Penny

By Ryans

He is certain if he reached back, he'd find a knife embedded there. Buried deep between his shoulder blades for decades. Placed there by people he once called friends. By someone he fought in a war with.

He never knew it was there.

Forgotten long ago with the spin of a penny.

He was a loyal attack dog. Did as he was told, rarely questioned what was asked of him. Yet, now he knows they made him. Tore him apart, stole away what he had been, and put him back together.

Created long ago with the spin of a penny.

An Old Friend

By Ryans

The castle cuts a black silhouette in the dark.

The memories of that night are worn at the edges, but still able to hurt, as the small powered boat makes its way to the grave of the Ferrymen. Birds shriek unhappily at the invasion and swoop passed his head.

It was sad that bones were left to bleach out in the sun. No one brave enough to venture onto the cursed island.

It doesn't take long for his to find it. Still where it fell, covered with dirt and vines. His fedora.

"Hello, old friend, we have work to do."

It's Totally a Word

by Jane

I hate these moral quandaries. To do what is good for you or to do what is good. The distinction implies that to choose the latter is to choose what is not good for you. For you. Who are we kidding? For Jane.

I was a lawyer, you'd think I'd be better at pragmatism. Of course, I was also a solider, which is not a job for those with good survival instincts.

But the fact stands, I've never been one to let injustice just sit there, being all injustical.

I am going to be so fired after all this.

Vanili Senja

by Huruma

It was hard enough to admit it to myself. Harder to tell someone. Nearly impossible to tell him. I'm sure he knows by now.

I'm not so sure that he understands how difficult it was. Is. How awkwardly painful that it is to look at people and know them, and you look at yourself and see something so foreign that it speaks a language all its own.

He's smart, but he's only a man-

-and I've learned to not give them too much credit. Still, such credit is deserved where it is deserved. Of anyone I know, I think he deserves it most.

The Tip of the Iceberg

by Bao-Wei

It's not like sleep, though I think that I dream. Then again, much of this has been like an endless one. I'd like to dream about somewhere that isn't so cold. Though to me, it's always warm.

I go places that I could never have, and it isn't as bad. When you're normal, you can't experience the things that I do now. More than once I've gone as far as I can, though never south- north, or east.

I would never see myself here if I weren't like this.

I would not have thought twice.

Whalesong is so very beautiful.

What Then

by Anonymous

If he'd remained behind,

like she asked him to.

He tokes alone, oily smoke compressed in his lungs and spent in a draconic wind warm through his sinuses

The ocean forbidding black for miles, cloying cloud cover smothering low with acidic humidity, he sits and watches and thinks to himself

indian style atop the edge of a skyscraper he has no right to occupy, through too many locked doors

quiet

brow hooded and knuckles bent to scruffy chin, city light an industrial smear of orange and bruise brown, jet liners coasting over a kingdom that doesn't belong to him

yet.

Buffer

by Deckard

Leather pressed cool and close to the long flanks of his face

he wakes on the carpet, black matted in thick against the grain, gumming cheek to shoulder. Guts turned, bitter crust white at the corners of his mouth. Knife a dry file on orbital socket, metal tweaking to bone

when he pries them open with a wet crunch and pop, steam sweet and warm in the winter fog that

muffles

crack

everything

into a dull roar. Manageable as the gas heater's hiss at the foot of his bed when he rolls over and reminds himself drowsily

not to remember.

There Is No Escape

by Elisabeth

I can't let things be. It's just not in me to walk away. A vacation would be nice. Some time to sleep. I can't remember the last time I slept without nightmares. And there are more horrors to come. Did we cause them? Is this our fault? I hope not.

I dream of what could have been. Should we have left Arthur — and well enough — alone? There has to be a way to mend it without making it worse. Without becoming monsters ourselves.

I used to think we might eventually be able to leave the fight. I know better now.

Envy

by Kaitlyn

Cold and lackin' emotions. Feelin' no pain or worry.

I envy the drone.

Wishin' daily I could be like it, no cares or feelin's. Just cold metal and programmin'.

Daily I have to deal with beings of flesh and blood, feel their aches and pains. Listen to their bitchin' about such little things. Looking to me to fix their problems, when I can't even fix my own.

The human race is just a bunch of wimps, lazy and selfish.

A robot doesn't have to worry about all that, just execute programmin' and not care about the rest of the shit.

Growing Old Again

by Ryans

Water streams down his face in rivulets as he looks up at the mirror, hands bracing at the edge of the porcelain sink, as he leans over the basin full of water. Turning his head a little to look at the silver that has started to thread it's way through dark hair.

Did he remember showing the signs this early?

Finger tips tug down a little at the corners of his eye, watching the lines smooth, but hints of creases remain. Didn't he already do this dance before?

The dance with time.

He get's to do it all over again.

Snow

by Kaylee

Tiny hand red from cold is held out to her, snow clings to fingers, shaken in a gesture of 'hurry!' She kneels to brush the clinging ice crystals away and then presses her own hands over tiny ones to warm them.

"I told you it was cold," she chides softly, with deep affection. The older blonde suddenly remembers her father echoing those words.

Pale eyes only stare up to her, no voice to offer comment. Only thoughts of how it felt when picking up the snow.

She wonders what her family would think seeing her caring for a child?

Five Kisses

by Anonymous

1. “Mom says I’m fat,” she says, pushing the chocolates away.
“You’re not,” he retorts.
She giggles and leaves him one.
2. Calvin dies because he doesn’t know about the bomb in her mouth.
3. “Why would I bet on the twenty percent I can’t see coming?”
Walter laughed. “Me,” he said, leaned in and left him swearing.
4. Ingrid. Maybe.
5. Everybody assumed it was merely night terrors because it started at eight, before the other symptoms, and he even stopped screaming in a year; so Mum simply kissed his forehead before bed, for four years of that nightmare.

Lioness

by Anonymous

In my dreams, memories flash, the past vibrant and technicolor, brighter than the moments ever were in mundane reality.

The scent of lavender filters out the acrid stench of sweat on my damp pillow. Red hair brushes my cheek, blue eyes gaze down as I feel a gentling touch, a cool hand on my febrile brow.

The fever makes everything blurry, but in my dreams, in my dreams within my dreams, everything is razor-sharp and loud.

I dreamt of her just once, delirious and drunk on fever. In my dreams, she was dark and fierce. A lioness.

A warrior.

Stories from the Past

by Anonymous

You’d think beach or mountains, right? Maybe a treehouse I’d had as a kid (if I didn’t live in a slum)? Wrong.

My favorite place? Antique shops.

Every antique has a story waiting for the right person, someone who isn’t just looking for knickknacks to fill space on a shelf. Someone who isn’t trying to strike it rich like those people who find a Ming vase for $1.

Someone who can tell, although the people who owned a particular object wanted a different one, they loved it eventually, because it belonged to them…

…that being loved trumps being wanted.

Altruism

by Anonymous

You say I’m naive because I have hope.

Let me tell you something.

It’s fucking easy to see this screwed-up world how it is: dark and cruel and heartless.

It’s easy to see smoke in the skies and taste blood in your mouth, shrug your shoulders and say, “That’s the way things are, kid, grow up. Life ain’t fair.”

It’s not easy to see what isn’t: how things could be, would be if everyone fought for their beliefs.

I come from a long line of believers. Their lives weren’t easy; my life sure isn’t.

But it’s worth fighting for.

The Human Condition

by Anonymous

The boy died in his sleep. Being of a strange nature and relatively unimportant, there was no funeral held and many failed to even notice. In the nights following, she lit a candle for him, but it was difficult to feel sad. Flame-light beckoned in the grey-winged moths to keep her company, and cast plain wood and brass into a queen's gold. It shone like a beacon from the river-side house.

They came in on boats tiled with paua shell beneath the night sky, summoned by the jasmine, and their luggage weighted with memory. Loneliness being only a human condition.

Fine Print

by Anonymous

Freedom isn't all it's made out to be. The freedom to run and set fires and wear what y'like, even if it's 'nothing.'

But freedom of rational choice is the real killer.

Freedom've choice entails accountability for actions taken by you,

the actor

in a context wherein independence is more accurately akin to


isolation


and so the absence of any culpable entity to blame beyond the civilized persons of messrs you and yourself for the utterly fuckin' retarded shit 'you' gets 'yourself' into when there's nobody qualified around to say 'No.'

'There isn't always a next time.'

Le Roman de Renard

by Anonymous

He can't remember who gave him the picture book because it was gifted when his hands were still too weak to hold it. He'd open it to check the note scrawled on the inside of the cover in someone's handwriting, but he doesn't have it anymore.

Hasn't since he was nine or ten, too young and stupid to realize that just because you're small enough to squeeze through a hole doesn't mean you should. That foxes don't walk on two legs and animals aren't people, but sometimes the opposite is true.

They caught him by the scruff. Lucky someone came.

Accidents

by Anonymous

When he called her a dyke for wanting her own motorcycle instead of riding on the back of his, she hit him hard enough to break his nose. That had been an accident.

The hitting. Not the breaking.

There's still blood on her knuckles when she sticks out her thumb and hitches a ride out of Friendship (a ridiculous name for a city) on her way to Polk County (ridiculous too but for different reasons).

In the passenger's seat of the 1987 Dodge Dakota, she empties herself on the dash.

She's drunk. Angry.

Frightened by how often these things coincide.

A Thousand Words, Part II.5

by Francois

In 1954, she marries/married her fiance. They live/d together for fifteen years, she bears/ed him exactly one son, and one way or another, the man that stayed at her house is gone from her life long before then.

Francois is/was an impatient student. The details are what he remembers/ed, desiring to fill in the light shading of his eyes, the curve of her lip — not proportion, not perspective. But she is/was a patient teacher, and showed him the circles and lines' necessity. People begin as their skeletons, she tells/told him.

Draw their bones.

Reworked in the Margin at 2 AM

by Anonymous

"What is it?"

"Some one has died. You did not say it had broken out among your people."

"I did not know! Come with me!"

After that, appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness of the morning was explained. It had broken out in its most fatal form and people were dying like flies.

She had been ill in the night, and it was because she had just died that the hidden had wailed in the huts. Before the next day three others were dead and others had run away in terror.

There was panic on every side, and dying people.

Little Frank Abagnale

by Anonymous

Her mother doesn't let her out much anymore. Something about being scared, or at least that's what her sisters say. It's not much consolation when they're the only girls — women, really — there to brush her hair, pinch her cheeks until they're pink and tell her she's pretty.

She read about the Piltdown Man in a book when she was twelve and the Tanaka Memorial a few years later. By fifteen, they were calling her Little Frank Abagnale and put her to work doing something both her parents would've approved of.

Stupid to think that allowed her to leave.

Phone

by Bella

Dad, it's me. I'm fine, I'm fine! Tell Mom I'm fine.

No.

insistently

No, Dad, really, it's important that I stay here.

Yes for my job, Dad. Yes, I understand.

stammering

Christmas? I- I'll have to-

What?

I'm sorry, Dad. No, I just-

Okay. Okay. I'll be there at Christmas. Even though we're not Christian.

laughing

Solstice rite, fine.

I- what? Um- no. No, I don't think so.

No, I- really, it's just-

I'm not going to lie, but I don't have to say.

Yes, a father has a right to ask, and a daughter has a right not to answer.

Dad.

Daddy.

I promise you, I'm okay.

Ode to Vincent's Pate

by Anonymous

It shines.

It makes one yearn to know if it is indeed a solar panel for a sex machine.

Is that what makes Lancaster belt out aria's from across Sarisa's desk and leave charr'd marks ceilings.

Is it why you frown with the mien of a Kenyan lion that stalks across the Sahara, loosing that antelope that was just a hair, pun intended, faster than you. The lack of a glossy mane to shake at the other Lions.

You are Lazzaro. You own it. Why have hair when you can have Lazzaro's pate, newly sprung from it's smoky depths.

REOWR!

Untitled III

by Bella

The real problem comes with the 'What next?' It may be that the feeling summed up in those two little words is precisely what gets her in so much trouble. There must always be… something else. And if it's not something she wants, it's something she doesn't want and thus she wants to get away from it. A push, a pull, some new worry or regret or wish or desire. And all of it just… 'what next?' Both fearful in anticipation, and hungry for more.

The present painful, unless you obliterate concern for the future, and thought of the past.

Untitled II

by Abigail

I am ashamed of myself. I am un-happy. I am ashamed of myself. I am depressed. I am ashamed of myself. I am guilty. I am ashamed of myself. I am heavy-hearted. I am ashamed of myself. I am sorry. I am ashamed of myself. I am distressed. I am ashamed of myself. I am immodest. I am ashamed of myself. I am immoral. I am ashamed of myself. I am wretched. I am ashamed of myself. I am reprehensible. I am ashamed of myself. I am delinquent. I am ashamed of myself. I am UN-HAPPY.

I am not me.

Breaking Point

by Gillian

If I were going to be rescued, it would have happened already. I'm all alone. He will never let me go. I'm too important to him. Every day this continues, I want it more and more. I started to look forward to the visits, and the injections. Just because it hurt the longer they didn't happen.

I hate him. I hate him for doing this to me. I hate the needle and the black liquid. I hate the power that comes with it.

The chance will come. He will not use me anymore. No one will.

Gillian Childs is dead.

Ikhayaenaba

by Huruma

To feel at home. I am not sure that I know what home is. I do not think that I ever did. I had no childhood on which to develop a concept of what is home.

I see these people gathering together, I see them as families. I do not quite understand, though I seem to be getting the chance myself. But I still cannot tell if I am home.

I once heard that home is a place where there is love overflowing.

I do not think that I have that place yet. And will I ever have that place?

There Are Many Like It

by Evan

My home is cramped, noisy, up four flights of stairs, and recently had a hole ripped open in the roof. But it is cheap, and it is convenient, and it is mine. I am starting to share it with someone.

My home is cramped, noisy, blown up, frozen, baked, and recently had most of its people black out all at the same time. But it is famous, and it is challenging, and it is mine. Some people are starting to share it with me.

This time next year, I will have a home. I hope it is the same one.

Broken

by Nick

He'd heard his mate's mother whisper it, using the word for his home. She'd whispered to another parent, both eyeing him with pity. Later, he asked his teacher what it meant; she smiled sadly, explaining it meant his parents weren't together anymore.

He doesn't think that's what it really means. Standing before his mirror, he counts bruises on thin ribs and frail arms. How much longer can his body endure before he breaks into 1,000 shards? A home cannot break, but bones can, he knows. A look into his little sister's eyes tells him that hearts can be broken, too.

Keep Safe

by Francois

Brick on bricks, a theory of guardianship, and it keeps things out (in theory, because Francois won't forget what happened when that failed, when nightmare-memories got in). For a long time, home was a suitcase, a car he'd bought or stolen, the crowded, shared bedrooms, and it's hard to cultivate a particular concern for how well it keeps things away.

It's how it fails to keep things in, how it fails to trap what's important and keep it preserved, keep it close. Theories and strategy paper his bed in blue prints and Xerox journal copies, cold every night.

Always and Forever

by Quinn

Home is many things. To some, it's a just a place, to some it's a place they dread, to some it's nothing at all.

But to me, home is one of the most important things in the world.

Home is where comfort lies, where love is found, and where I can come to rest my eyes after a long day. Home is where friends come to be, lovers come to stay, family comes to see, where solace is found in the music instruments littering a room.

But most of all, home is where I can be me, always and forever.

What is Home?

by Melissa

Home. I'm not sure I know where it is anymore. It was never where I was born. That was just geography, nothing more. It wasn't any of the safehouses I stayed in. They were just geography. Now I have a house, and I have roommates, but is it really a home? Or have I just began another safehouse, one outside of the realm of the Ferrymen? Would these people stay here with me if they weren't in danger or had somewhere else to go? Or do the people matter? What is it that turns it into a home? Tell me.

Sharp

by Bao-Wei

Freezing, from the inside out- feeling my skin splinter with crystal, feeling my muscles rigid with ice. The pain- oh- the pain- The pain was unbearable. When I tried to stop it-

The pain left and was replaced by the feeling of nothing.

To not feel the weight of your own shoulders, to not feel the prickle of nerves under your flesh when honing points from stone.

To not be able to touch another, for fear of penalty of death, to remain capable of making human connection behind a crag of face.

For me-

Liberation.

Another, colder form of hell.

Hey, God

by Monica

Hey, God? It's Monica. Monica Dawson. You and I don't talk much, but I'm on my own now and…

Look, I don't know what I'm doing. I just need to know if I'm doing the right thing. If you could just… give me a nudge in the right way? Actually, a big, bright, blinking neon sign would be better, if you've got one. 'Monica. Over Here. God.'

We can't sit by. The right thing to do is never the easy one. Isn't that how it goes? I can do something. I can fight for what's right.

But, God?

What's right?

First Day

by Francois

An introductory tour.

This is where the sick people go, and every day is a bad day, concentrated in a city that is one long bad day. This is where other men have walked in your shoes. Francois doesn't know his name, the one in his head from St Luke's, but he suspect it's the one whose handwriting he's adopted.

He wonders what happened to him, after his eyes go scoping in the mens' mirror for silvergrey shot through his hair.

When the pager goes off for the first time, he thinks he might die. Then he goes to work.

Fires of Destruction

by Abby

I am destruction.

I watched the timbers fall all around, on me, through me. Watched part of my livelihood and my home go up in flames around me with only myself to blame. I can hear them call for me outside the burning walls but I'm afraid to leave. Afraid that I'll hurt them.

Ironic really, that Izzy's legacy should die likely in the same way she went out. I hear the sirens, can see the water when it hits spots, changing from red to eventually blue.

What have I done to myself?

I'm sorry Richard, I tried. I failed.

Waking

by Dajan

When he wakes, it is to the sound of trucks running along the ascending roads.

When he wakes, it is to the smell of dust and sweat and sun-baked ground.

When he wakes, it is to the sight of a pock-marked cityscape on the opposite side of his windowpane.

When he wakes, it is to the smile of her on his small face.

When he wakes, it is to the new day in an old place.

When he wakes, it is to the calling of his name.

A dark sky during a heavy rain.

When he wakes, it is to the bright day after a cleansing rain.

Fight or Flight

by Lynette

It all started with burnt sheets and fear. My father's gentle acceptance, his firm protection, that all came after. It made it easier. But it all started with burnt sheets and waking up from a nightmare. I hate that moment. That… dream. It's just a dream. That it still frightens me at thirty-two… it's humiliating. A grown woman crying because her father isn't there to hold her… Jesus. These people have taken my clothes, my hair, my blood and now my dignity, too. Have they taken your fight, too, Lynette? Did you ever have any?

Maybe I do now.

Fresh Paint

by Nadira

I threw my world away like crumpled paper. Shed my skin and left everything I knew to come here. No one knows my name here, a voiceless nameless face in the crowd. It isn't so much leaving my life behind that bothers me, it's the anonymity of it all-who knows me now? Here is a fresh start, freedom and safety, but it all starts over again. Now, I have to rebuild from the beginning. Faces and names, books upon books. Maybe I'll change colors this time. Red, maybe? New York could be red. I think it would like that.

Keeper of the Dead

by Melissa

The body is heavier than it should be, and smells bad too. It looks so wrong wrapped up in the cheery blue tarp. But then, everything about this situation is wrong. A man in my basement, dead, bricked up behind a wall. Who knows how long he was down there. And I can't even put him to rest like he deserves, not if I want to keep myself and Kendall safe. At least I'm not alone. She's here, helping. She carries one end of the tarp, I carry the other, and we drag it upstairs. And then we are off.

A Little More

by Sable

Lord, I know you ain't there. This is just me talkin' to myself. Only, as I don't wanna sound crazy, I'll address You with this particular fuckin' request.

Understand, Lord, that I ain't askin' to be dealt a better hand. I've never asked f'r that, as You well know A man c'n win with whatever goddamn (beggin' Your pardon) whatever set of rags he's given. He wins on wits 'n' grit.

But I'm askin' (not You, since You ain't there), just this once, f'r somethin' a little more than wits 'n' grit.

Lord, I humbly fuckin' request some luck.

Amen.

Wait

by Gillian

Hailey was gone.

Mind says to wait for backup, to take an army. Heart says to hurry, go now, don't wait.

She'll be cold; she'll be afraid. The tears will freeze to her eyelashes before they fall. Her lips will turn blue as they tear at her flesh.

She can't wait.

So Gillian followed.

A few guns the only back up, no army at her back. Out the door, into the snow. Feet hurried, no waiting.

She's cold; she's afraid. The tears freeze to her eyelashes before falling. Lips turn blue as they tear into her.

She should have waited.

At Seventeen

by Abby

At Seventeen I prayed:

I am His hand. Through me He shows His love, His power and His might. Through my hands, He works His earthly miracles and displays the awesomeness of His intentions for this world. I am His love for all cradled in these palms and with a prayer, He takes away your hurts through me. I am His to do with as He see's fit and He see's fit to place me where there are hurts. I will take them all away, for Him, for them, for myself. This is my path in life, set by Him.

Statue

by Ryans

I enduring time, still and silent, like a statue. Never really speaking of the pain. I try to keep it all inside. To harden my skin against life.

However, even the statue cracks with time, despite any attempted to preserve it. Bit and pieces, that make it what it is, fall away exposing the raw core. Weakens it and eventually the statue will crumble.

How much time before I crumble? How long before the cracks of time break me?I can not say, but til then… I will continue to endure, be like the statue. Hide all the pain away.

River Pebbles

by Kaylee

The waters of time push me along, tumbling along to my fate.

It erodes at my surface, constantly changing me.

I am forced along, not really knowing where I am going, not having complete control.

This way and that, rolling across the bottom of the river.

Failing again, I tumble through the rapids, wishing for the calm again.

Hoping I can find a peaceful place to lay for a time.

But when I finally do, the river waters tug at me and pull me along again.

Changing me… Changing us all.

How will my journey end?

Only the river knows.

Have

by Gillian

Have.

Not have.

There are so many things that I don't have that I wanted. So many things that I have that I didn't ask for. My life is full of give and take, of questioning and being questioned. I feel like a mix of contradictions. Nothing ever goes in just one direction. There's no black, no white. No good, no evil. Everything comes at a price. Nothing is gained without something being lost in the process. Sometimes it feels like I've lost more than I've gained.

It's hard to see what you have through what you do not have.

Still

by Deckard

They can't see him in the shower.

No mundane lens can focus through the plastic sweep of the Company curtain and he's already spent a lot of time in here

with himself

in the scorching prattle and steam. Runoff wound hot off his back, cagey muscle and bone sunk lax under fading ink and knotted scars.

He showered at the Y before. Remembers bare feet and brown thinning to crimson through the grate between them, clothing swaddled cold and heavy and dark around his rickety frame

puddles like infections on clammy concrete, everything damp.

Different.

But he still misses her.

Questing Beast

by Murdoch

The Once and Future King is a masterpiece of nostalgia. That is its power, its genius and its failure. It longs for a better, imperfect but still noble age. An age where tragedy was possible, and where doomed wars were waged for doomed love.

The lesson, though, is that there can be no return. That, while we seek the past, and we know that it was, it forever eludes us.

Wisest is Merlyn, whose past is the future.

Finest is Lancelot, who can only go forward.

Weakest is Arthur, trapped in childhood dreams.

And the past is a questing beast.

A Delicate Thought

by Sable

Yeah, some songs make me cry. I think that's fuckin' healthy as a musician.

Some songs cheat, y'know? Like, some chord progressions give you shivers like… y'know. Those kinda shivers. And some just make your eyes prick somehow, put a weight in your chest. But that doesn't count. It's like an onion, it's just what it does.

There's a saying on this Alan Parson album. How music and a pleasurable idea together are poetry. That's not the whole thing, but I like that first part.

But songs that make me cry, the idea's gotta give pleasure and pain.

Yellow

by Delilah

Two months ago it was storming. I'm remembering that it was raining both times- both funerals. Raining during the plane over to the United States. I only think of it now because I wonder what they'd all think now.

My dad would be bursting angry, but my mom would be like honey in tea. Everyone else too. My dad was always kind of pissed at everything.

He'd be happy in the end. So will I, I think. I just need this coldness to be over. I gotta feel the warm sun again, to feel like a yellow daffodil in the yellow springtime.

Words for Peyton

by McRae

Whhhang is the sound of a golf club hitting its mark, but the object knocked dwindling into the snow-black horizon isn't a ball but a Coke can, shot off the Sweat Lodge's rooftop to sail over the next street.

Chuckles steps closer. Watching, but there's no applause. He says, "Hey. You get… uh. Scared, about what God thinks? Seeing all our— shit?"

"Shit like hitting trash hoping you'll concuss one of those gang-banger motherfuckers driving up Winslow Avenue?"

"And worse. We'll do more."

Jericho doesn't answer. Then, "Yeah. But faith goes both ways, 'specially when you can believe your eyes."

Perception

by Melissa

Perception is a funny thing. It can blind us to the reality behind the illusion. Make us do foolish things in the name of what we perceive to be truth. It can make hell seem like paradise, and paradise seem like hell.

I've seen hell, the various levels of it. I've been in hell, seen it in the faces of people I know. And I've seen paradise. I stood at the precipice, ready to jump, and I faltered, because of what I thought it was.

Next time, I won't falter. Next time, I won't let anyone stand in my way.

Cautionary Tales

by Odessa

No name. No address. No connections.

No way back.

The walls are closing in, ready to suffocate me as the walls whisper to me my shortcomings and the edges of my vision grow dark. All the lies I've told cannot undo the things I've tried to do right. Can't make me what I wanted to be.

I'm close now to something true, maybe. It cannot change my past. Paint it a different shade of grey-blue perhaps, but never make it right. The truth is always more disappointing than the fairy tale.

It's the lie that I can live up to.

Happiness: Painting

by Roderick

Happiness for me is paintin'. Pickin' up my paintbrush, loading it with colour, and puttin' it to canvas. Oh, let me tell you, that is a moment of creation, as I give birth to images in my head. There is no better feeling then watching that simple smear of color slowly become something of absolute beauty.

Well, unless you black out in the middle of it and wake up to something completely different. Then it's like someone slipping a roofie into your Guiness and you waking up the next mornin' knowin' you had a shag, but didn't get to participate.

Brush Strokes

by Roderick

Have you ever gottin' close to an old paintin'? No? I have. It is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. When you get close, you can smell the age, you can see each stroke. Your eyes can follow the delicate dance the brush took across the canvas, and see the thought and care shown as it was moved.

There is much you can learn from those brush strokes. A paintin' is a moment frozen in time. A moment of pure genius captured for all the world to see, but most just bloody well don't give a rats arse.

Little King

by Huruma

It was never personal. The two of them finally cornered me in Angola. Between a rock and a hard place, the only way to break free is through.

The second man- I never say his name from respect- He was not the first to lock horns with me, but I could tell that he was doing it because in his heart he thought it was Right. I can respect moral duty, if not practice it duly myself.

Benjamin does it for his obligation to man, as well.

I do not regret making an example of his partner for his sake.

The Storm

by Melissa

I stand upon the rooftop, my face tipped up to the sky. Though my eyes are closed I can see the flash of lightning, the brilliant glow of it. Seconds later when the thunder booms and shakes the very foundation of the building I stand upon, I smile. The rain begins to pour down on me, soaking my hair and clothes, washing away all my fears, my worries. At least for the moment.

I stand in the middle of the storm, and I abandon myself to it willingly. Life is wild, and untamed, just like this storm. Just like me.

Shades of Gray

by Melissa

What would I do? That is perhaps the hardest question ever asked, Abby. How could I refuse to reclaim a lost part of me? How could I pass up the chance to do something as natural and necessary as eating or sleeping?

On the other hand, how could I give myself over to having an ability I want to use so badly, when it hurts people? Does it make me a bad person to want something like that? To want to want to use an ability that hurts?

I live in shades of gray, but fear sliding into the black.

Lose Myself

by Melissa

I thought I wanted the excitement. The thrill of the chase. The warm glow of helping someone like me. Saving them from the same things that I endured. And it is exciting. It is fulfilling. I hate being idle. Idle hands are the devil's playground. Though I don't believe in the devil.

But I need a release. Something that isn't life and death to focus on. I need to dance. I need to drink. I need a warm body to lose myself in. I need someone to share myself with. Even the darkest parts of me. Before I lose myself.

I'm soooo drunk

Hello kitty comes on thongs. I never knew that till I met Xiu.

Xiu has a great ass.

I'm sitting here and looking at it when she's looking somewhere else or she's going to get more alcohol or the pizza. I don't care how much my wrist hurts, but she has got hello kitty, squished between her butt cheeks. Rising up above her short shorts. I think my momma'd kill me if I wore them. No, Momma's gonna kill me for the blue hair, and the blue nails, and I think she did something to my back.

I'm so drunk.

Damnit, I Do

by Abigail

If I didn't know better, I'd turn around and follow my parents back home to Louisiana. I'd find me a good Christian boy to marry and give our parents bouncing babies by the score. You'd find me in church on Sundays in prim white, elbow deep in dishwater and a smile on my face as sunny as the apron I'd wear and setting back the feminist movement by a couple decades and play at being happy homemaker. Behind my picket fence with the climbing ivy and the cat in the window at night watching the fireflies.

But Damnit, I do.

The Equilateral Year

by Teo

We three hung out a lot. Before the oracles went blind. Before I left her a message on my bastard son, after Jesse died. After me and her, before him and her.

For his psychology PhD, Deckard learned the WISC-V. My IQ totaled 135. Deckard's was 139, but he pretended he'd cheated. Abby drawled about embarrassing herself, and we didn't push it. "You're the wisest anyway," I said.

(Deckard blinked.)

I asked: "Would you rather ride on a train, dance in the rain, or feel no pain?"

I know I'm still right, but I'm scared to hear her answer now.

Folie a Deux

by Francois

Teo's been watching them talk. Like Prior Walter with bedsheets up to his chin as the ghosts of ancestors past squabble over bloodlines and bastards, except these are from the future and the dregs of his imagination.

Watches Ghost's hands go out and snag another pair sheathed in creaking leather gloves. Turns clothed palms up to the sky as if inspecting them. "You're going to get older, quicker. I wouldn't put my cock in Kazimir even if I could."

"Ah." The Frenchman's eyes are azzurro over a sharp smile. Teeth flash in the dark like knives. Amusement. "C'est la vie."

My Art

by Abigail

I forget about them sometimes, startle when I catch a glimpse drying off after a shower. The scrolling of words along my side that makes me turn and look at them all, crane my neck in the mirror. Each has significance, reason and meaning. For all that I always rolled my eye at being called an angel, I like the look of them on my back. I love the look on Roberts face when he saw them. Like he can't believe they're there. The feel of flints fingers tracing the letters or Brenda kissing the cross as she goes by.

The Seeds Root

by Delilah

The greenhouse was always full- she could breathe in the smells So she spent most of her time playing inside, hiding under the wooden tables, shelves, and slats.

She would sit under the dripping tables of garden flowers, with dirty knees, hands, fingernails, smudges on her nose and cheeks.

Walter would often kick her out.

But her fingers were tracing peepholes before she would be discovered. Delilah found herself peeking past little grimy holes on the other side of glass.

Grandfather was such a magician! Oh, what magic!

One day she would be that good!

FRONTLINE

by Lancaster

Mouth breathers. All of them.

Do I know 'em? Do I need to know 'em? Let me tell you something. I know everything about these people because they're Kershner's people and Kershner's people all have one thing in common, and that is failure. They're not scared enough, just like Kershner's not scared enough and never was. They call that sociopathy, kids. Heroes are sociopaths.

Unless you gave them to me. I'd scare the hell out of them, sic wild dogs on them in their morning laps, and they'd be the best damn flea control the world's ever seen.

Lancaster out.

Casualties

by Aviators

You know I used to think my life was pretty good.

I had a job where I wasn't accountable to anyone.

Or anything.

I traveled the world, I had a team, I had a family.

Then the bomb happened; Jensen disappeared.

Then the Evolved were revealed; Sarisa disappeared.

Then the Linderman Act came; Adrianne disappeared.

Then the Vanguard showed up, and suddenly the world needed us again.

But Jensen never came back. He was one of them now.

I lost a friend and a brother.

I lost my purpose.

I lost my fucking eye.

I'm losing my fucking mind too.

Happiness: Balloon Animal

by Cooper

Happiness is the brightly colored balloon animal!

When you've got a case with young children involved, they can be all closed down and not want to talk at all, but when you pull out the first balloon, you get their attention. Eyes widen with curiosity as you start twisting and bending the shapes, you chat them up brightly and try to look less intimidating.

When your done and you offer it to them, their faces light up and suddenly you don't seem so bad, and just for a moment you make a traumatic situation for a child a little better.

Dancing

by Melissa

The beat is heavy. I can feel it in my bones. In my soul. It's addicting. But no more addicting than the press of people around me. Knowing that I'm crushed in the middle of a sea of humanity. And we're all there for one purpose.

It's primal. Natural. It feels so right. So good. So freeing. It's something that we've done since the dawn of time.

I close my eyes and tilt my face up, smiling as I bathe in the atmosphere. As I soak in every second, as if I could always remember?

How it feels to dance.

Myself

by Melissa

Sometimes I'm not sure if I like myself. What I've become. I can't be carefree. I can't just dance and watch movies. To make friends and find someone of my own. Someone to love. Maybe to begin a family with. To grow old with.

Instead I'm not sure I will grow old. I don't regret the fighting. I believe in the cause. I believe it's right. But sometimes I regret the things I'm forced to do to try to win that fight.

But in the end, it doesn't matter if I like myself or not.

I am who I am.

I Will

by Gillian

I had a future destroyed; I will rewrite it. My heart was broken; I will put it back together. I lost my family; I will make a new one. My body is scarred; I will heal. I lost myself; I will find out who I am.

Once, I wanted the world to revolve around me, cater to my whims. Now, I will move my own world in any way I can.

A prophet said I would die, I wouldn't live to see my birthday. My body's in the ground, but here I stand.

I will make the most of it.

Satisfaction

by Meredith

The song on the radio is Satisfaction, but Meredith can't get any. She thinks back to her nightmares, to her promises and realizes they spawn each other. What is she, but an out of control blaze? Once, she was a merry campfire built to keep people warm and now she is all devastation: a forest fire, causing the loss of homes and lives.

Yes, she beckons to the innocent and well meaning moths, come closer and let me singe your wings. They can't help themselves, can't be anything but the sum of their own follies. But, then, neither can she.

Madagascar

by Claire

I miss it at times, it was simpler back then. No relationships to tie me in knots, no family nagging at me. There was only five main things I had to worry about.

Shoot. Get shot. Die. Get up. Repeat.

In Madagascar I left a part of my soul behind, not just parts and brain matter. I lost so much and gained even more, not just incurable malaria.

I left a cheerleader and returned a war tested soldier.

With the lessons I learned there, it is a miracle I came back at all.

Or have I even truly left it?

Bastard

by Abigail

There's something about that month, month or more that I don't want to forget. I'll never tell him, never tell anyone what it is. What came after the green flare. The way happiness and warmth bubbled up from infinitesimal point of origin in my body. It crept forward like a warm blanket pulled over me and after the first time, I never fought it again. I can see why they love him. I loved him too for that. I confess when I hit him, I wanted to feel that again. He disappointed me and gave me only pain. You bastard.

Happiness: Beyond

by Claire

Happiness is just beyond my reach. I grope for it with out-stretched and blood covered fingers, but don't quite make it.

I know there was a time I knew what it was, before Sylar stepped out of the shadow and into my life, but lately it seems like it was all just a dream.

Will there be a time I can touch it and hold it and remember what it was like again?

I hope to feel the warmth of it again, so I keep reaching for that happiness, no matter how long it stays just beyond my finger tips.

Happiness: Changes

by Abigail

Happiness used to be fingers of sunlight reaching through the tangle of Kudzu and tree's to splay it's weak warmth on my face while I laid on the moss while water burbled around me and I daydreamed about the children I would have. Now, happiness is being at peace with myself, my place in the world, people around me and my faith in all things. Happiness is a dinner table groaning with food and those I love and care for seated at it's table. Our hands grasped in each others and prayer's for safety. My happiness always changes with age.

Kick in the Head

by Bao-Wei

Martin was quite on the game.

Chang, the children- the dragons- after a time I simply came about to leave things to happen. For that the ghosts- in all senses- leave me be. Then the nightmares came- and frankly- honestly- they were like nothing I had ever experienced before. I do miss them. Even though it was painful, it was certainly revealing.

Now the reason for it is gone, just like everything else that comes too close. I suspect that I should stop trying to reconnect to the world where it provides me opportunity to do so.

It never works.

Writer's Block

by Helena

I've been staring at this blank screen for fifteen minutes now and oh God what if I cant think of anything? They're counting on me to know what to say, God, all the kids who come up to me and tell me how much they admire me, and I cant let them down, can I? The words have to come, because if I don't have them, I'm going to disappoint everyone, and I don't think I can bear that. People need to know that they have choices. They need to hear the truth. Oh God, the screen is still blank.

Happiness: The Medal

by Anonymous

Happiness is the way her mouth appears to get smaller instead of bigger when she smiles. It's matchstick-thin arms cinched around his neck and the press of her handsome face against his chest through the olive brown of his uniform.

It's the abrupt revelation that she's gotten very tall.

Large but feminine hands built for playing scales tease the ribbon between their delicate fingers and explore the gold star's five tapered points. He would wear it on the left side of his jacket if he hadn't asked her to hold it for him.

Герой России. A title he doesn't deserve.

Happiness: On Top

by Logan

According to the best scientists in the world (probably), happiness is stimuli, neurological response, a release of flooding chemicals into synapses and then the body's stupid-dog tail wagging response. Happiness is also making her blush and making him shudder, and being on top, and a really nice pair of Versace blue jeans. Happiness is usually expensive for how cheap it really is.

But it's nothing without euphoria, snowstorm endorphins, without the finer tunes of dopamine and serotonin, the tickle sensation under flesh, the race of hot blood, the ache in loins. Surface giddiness, damp skin, unseeing eyes. Happiness is chemical.

Happiness: Content

by Judah

Happiness is a word that Judah Demsky doesn't associate with himself. He prefers content and generally refuses to desire more than what he has: stable career, two little girls who are not so little anymore, and a dog with medical bills too expensive for him to talk to anyone except their veterinarian about.

His 2002 Ford Taurus, oxide yellow: incidental.

The lease he's considering breaking for a twenty-year mortgage and a two bedroom duplex in Brooklyn or Queens he can leave for Colette when he's gone: slightly less so.

When he watches the three of them sleep? Everything else: forgotten.

Gallic

by Francois

Black and red, like the bottom of a dying hearth, and there's a certain burn-heat too to the repeated needlepricks darting in and out of his flesh. Lying as if sedated on his stomach, arms folded beneath his chin, and strangely nervous about this, this scar, a deliberate injury though it might be. There is little he plans to own up until his imagined far away death, but he will have this.

This is a token of facetious patriotism, even after his accent dims, even after he forgets how to speak the language, and even after he never goes back.

Happiness: Rush

by Daphne

The wind in my face. The salt on my lips. The shifting textures of water, sand, earth or asphalt beneath my flying feet. Feeling that everything chasing me grows smaller, tiny and insignificant with each forward rushing step I take. Knowing that I can leave my problems behind. Knowing that nothing can catch me unless I let it. Knowing that while danger may lurk, I am always one step ahead of it. It isn't fast enough to grasp me, that it can only grip the blur and wake of me, always coming up empty handed as I sprint toward freedom.

Happiness: Cicatrix

by Odessa

Happiness isn't the sleepy smile of a lover as sunlight sifts through the blinds. It isn't knowing she's done the right thing. It isn't protecting people who deserve to live. It isn't falling in love for the first time. It isn't in the way snow gently falls, or the stars twinkle up above. It isn't in the way dawn kisses the dew.

It isn't scar across her throat where she allowed him to prove himself. Ones less severe at her wrists where she cut herself free. Faded lines under ribs.

It's tracks on her arms, the absence in her veins.

Unborn Hope

by Pandora

Blue eyes stare at me as if questioning my desires. Inside me there's a flutter that has nothing to do with my own emotions. It's like the child knows. I'm not like that, am I? I would never hate you. But I would be afraid for you. Every single day of my life. Without your father to protect us.

And he couldn't protect himself.

If he sacrificed himself just so you could be persecuted, I don't know what I'll do. I will love you and protect you all the days of my life, but please don't be one of them.

Red Card

by Logan

Worth it. Worth getting up that fucking early, worth her mood at having to get ready at dawn, worth it when it's cold and the strain in muscles when you do laps around the field. Worth it for the scent of wet grass, dirt beneath your fingernails, competitive fire and being a hero.

Worth it too when some other kid gets the way of winning.

Worth letting your temper get away from you, knuckles popping dislocated— worth it— when it cuts against the kid's teeth and the ref blows the whistle. Kid grimaces with pinked teeth. Red card.

Worth it.

Monster

by Anonymous

He's been called a monster enough times that it's ceased to have any meaning beyond the subtler connotations of the sounds that accompany such accusations. Hitching breaths, shuddering moans, that noise a throat makes when it closes up around a scream — whether or not he's the cause or a transient remedy, he's heard them all.

They're right, of course. The only time he denies his true nature is in letters written to a girl by her absent brother because their mother works, their father is dead and she has only a cat named Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna for company.

Happiness: The Ferrymen

by Kaylee

Happiness is the look on peoples faces when you hand them a warm meal and a change of clothing, something they may have not seen for a time.

It's the look of awe on little faces as puppets dance on strings bringing to life stories told by a portly man, when the world around them is so dangerous and scary.

It is knowing the ones you care for and love are safe and sound, because you fought so hard and sacrificed so much to get them there.

Happiness is for me the satisfaction I get from working within the Ferrymen.

Happiness: My Daughters

by Ryans

Happiness is my daughters.

Memories of my girls when they were first born, tiny fists curling around my finger, even as I found myself wrapped around their own. So tiny and helpless.

To watch them take those first steps. Arm raised and faces so full of happiness, as they stumble into my waiting arms.

Later on, it's watching those strong young women walk across the stage getting their diplomas and knowing they are not so little anymore.

One day, they too will know my happiness as the tiny fist of their own child curls around a finger, changing their world.

Happiness: Gains

by Delilah

Happiness is everywhere. There is a lot of sadness these days, but it's the little things that matter most that also bring tiny bits of happiness. Tragedy happens, but one always has friends to turn to, or some creature to embrace. People that think they don't are fools, really, because there is always someone. Always.

I am fortunate to have a great deal of happiness, despite my hardships. I lost my family, but gained one. Lost my home, gained another. Lost my status as a human- gained a status as an evolved.

In that I gained a whole new world.

Fear the Princess

by Melissa

I don't need no stinkin' white knight. No hero to come rescue me from the dragons. I'm no damsel in distress, sitting up in a tower waiting around to be rescued. No Daphne to always get captured.

Princesses can be just as fierce as the knights who want to protect them. We can be just as deadly to anger, and just as hard to kill. So why are we considered weak? No one wants to mess with a mama bear, and lionesses are the ones who hunt while the lions stay at home babysitting.

Fear the princesses, my white knights.

Clones: Perfection

by Sylar

It's 6: 34 AM. His watch is off by two minutes and seven seconds. Sylar does not have the will to care — he feels like he's dying. Wounds have gone red and bloated at the edges, there's probably poison in his blood.

It's time to transcend flesh. It's time to finish what he started before he got weak. No longer weak. He knows he's just a broken off piece, maybe the worst part, but there's something to be said about a lack of excess baggage.

Grigori was fucking lying, when he said 'you don't deserve— '

(Because there is nothing he doesn't.)

Clones: Freedom

by Tavisha

Once upon a time, there'd been a man named Tavisha who died from internal bleeding after being heroic and later asked to be buried.

Since then, he's considered: broken necks in glass panes, monstrous blurry cars, getting stupid enough to tangle wings among the bird spikes that line the nicer buildings in a flurry of spitting feathers and flying flecks of blood. But most of the time, he flies, on the wings of soaring hawks or silent owls or fluttery sparrows.

Diets of insects, seeds, scattered berries.

(There is a greater freedom than even the sky. Tavisha will find it.)

Clones: Actress

by Jenny

She wears her red hair up today, and she turns once in the mirror. What she sees is a girl who's had it rough but maybe could still be a model one day. Maybe an actress.

Jenny is pretty sure she'd be a great actress.

And then if the dogs come back, she'll be there this time. The world will turn into black ink, white teeth, sharp knives, and she will string them up as an example to others and then help Gillian with the dishes later.

(When she shuts her eyes, she still sees the man in the door.)

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