“798 could still feel the scalding breath of Krohn, his landlord, on the hairs of his neck, but he was a Sentien, so he could be hundreds of feet behind him without 798 ever knowing. In the cramped apartment, he ran, though the possibility of such a distance was barely even possible.”
“As a corpse might recall / fingers of moonlight tangling gossamer / heavy with silence”
“Without discernible misery / The masked player strides in / Confidence exuding in wavering streams / The curtain lifts to uncover / So many gleaming faces / Apprehensive”
“He was no longer lost in space / His childhood gone at life’s behest / As he grew, a change in pace / To grow, to make money, to beat out the rest”
“You know that feeling when some days, we wake up and we just don’t want to get out of bed? So bedridden that sometimes, it even hurts to breathe. What’s the point of all this?”
“Holding onto the cracking piece of the bridge, questions flew across my mind. A warm hand grabbed me. He pulled me up, and I was deeply breathing on the side of the bridge. I turned around. I was going to thank him and give him everything I had.”
“It started again. The rebirth cycle started again. Once a month, I change into another person. Different age, different height, different me. And now I am a girl, Maria, sixteen years old and living in Ohio.”
“After hearing the rude comments other things had said about his body — Bob felt a certain way.”
“A large, clean, white box sits in the middle of a deserted, gray street. It lets out a wail, and my hinges squeak towards it. I open it, and inside is a wailing child, but where a second tiny arm should be, a clean stump is there instead. I turn away. The government will hunt and kill her for her imperfection.”
“Hello, folks! I see you have caught me in the process of cooking for my customers! It gets me so energetic!”
“I used to go to school, but I had to stop because the teacher said, being a girl, I had learned enough. But my mom still teaches me a little bit of something every morning. She taught me how to read and write. My brother, Joshua, is going to William and Mary next year.”
“In an open space shadowed by the main building, a Venorian maid, wearing her long, brown dress, was sweeping the leaves off the stone floor. The space was a circle, with four entrances and seating on the edge. In the middle of two entrances was a statue. The maid brushed her scaly forehead and looked up at the statue. It was a large, marble sculpture of a Dark Elf woman holding a sword in one hand and an olive branch in the other.”
“My house went down in a fire today, and the firemen are extinguishing the flames, but my son, Terry, is still inside. The flames are getting bigger and bigger, and I’m getting more and more worried. I just wanted to tell you because you’re my sister. Also, do you have a cold? You sound different.”