423 days. The old man still possessed the child-like habit of biting his lower lip when he wrote. The thick skin as dry as pork rind. He recorded the days without rain in a spare, makeshift almanac. The pages waxened from the soiled press of his hand

Nurse Smithers straightened Dr. Baumgartner’s feathered head dress. it had slipped down below the caduceus so carefully painted on his forehead by the medical ritual staff.

Kelly looked at her screen. Did she really just type that? Is she really going that cliche? Apparently so. She sighed. "Well I can't erase it for fear of losing words so I might as well just go with it."

Each mobile unit carried an Alsetex grenade launcher for dispersing tear gas. Any group of five or more people was deemed suspicious and immediately dispersed by roving patrols.

Innocent victims know their tonsils. Or know the sound of their forceful removal. Their mangled beauty is the grain that has gracefully substituted all the limb-hacking. The creature used to have a friend whose gestures were very harmless, …

sex trafficking

Somewhere in the belly of the beast something was stirring.

from here with its brightly polished fingers spread easily amongst the cresting winds off the choppysky, circling the sun and sea splattered cliffs like a lone marble rolling down a smoothed out incline only to be turned invisibly over again as if…

She seems to be demanding someone donate to her a beard. No one has gone any further with this, and the electricity of her song about beards, listing, growing more undulant, crescendos.

On their first meeting, when Hans rolled his wheelchair to her door she would be he first to say that her heart sank. But he was so beautiful and charming and funny and quirky that his disability was soon forgotten.

“You want me to come out there and repossess that froofy coffee you’re drinking?” he snaps, sending Corrallo up the steps and onto the street to lick his wounds.

My name is Sydnée Figge, and this is the beginning of my story. I suppose it should be said that even though people call me Syd, I am not a man. People who can actually see me know that right away, and I’m not ashamed of that even though I’m a bit olde

Some trick of the morning light makes the tattoo on her ankle look like the burn from a branding iron. She had watched her father as he slept last night. He was handsome and innocent, like a baby boy.

the old once new me

“Got a big one boy! He's movin' real fast! Don't think he has had time to eat the bait just yet, so we need to play him out. Let the hook set. Don't want to loose him! Get the net ready!”