img url "Hi there," I said as I walked to the front of the classroom. "My name is Lydia, and I will be your teacher today." The entire class greeted me with small waves and smiles.

img url I walked into a beautiful hotel called the Seaview Hotel. It had an age of over 150 years and yet it was not Grandpa’s house. The hotel had a touch and feel of Victorian-era architecture mixed

img url He was male. That could be discerned by the angular shape of his biceps where his sleeves were rolled up. His hair was close-cropped and black as obsidian. His eyes were that pale iridescent grey

img url The Lieutenant was grinding his teeth. " You promised! You promised us you could do it!" The old man sighed. "I gave you my word I would try, but even Zelretch can't rewrite the

img url In the next few weeks, I can expect it will be even worse. The Emperor will give the order, and the church will call the faithful to leave their homes and their families to be with the others at

img url Weeks have gone by since the night out at the lake. I hadn’t heard from my girlfriend in over a week and I am starting to worry. I have been thinking about getting into the detective business.

img url It was so early, so dark in the dark. It was raining heavily outside, the window drenched in the darkness. I was opening the blinds when I heard a noise. I left the window open because I though

img url The flowers were drenched, as if they had been taken out of the garden and saturated with the rain. The room was still, like a limbo, with all of them, the stillness of the water as the buckets

img url Deckard hung upside down, watching the bright television screen above his head. Each partner stood on each side of the TV, facing each other. “Alright, welcome to all the new contestants on the

img url I looked over my shoulder, the road empty behind us. Looking forward, I could see nothing. My hands vibrated against the steering wheel, the engine whining at me to speed up. Sitting lower in my

img url As I began my climb up the stairs to the top of the airship, the control room, I could only think of how I got here. It seemed only yesterday that I had walked down this same hallway. I had been

img url The big man was dancing. It was hard to believe after seeing his rather lifeless body, but there he was, dead or at least unconscious just seconds earlier, and there he was, shaking his feet in

img url Just over twenty-four hours ago, I was alone cutting vegetables in my kitchen when I heard one of the early morning news shows on the TV in the living room. I picked up the remote and changed the

img url I... am the Prophecy. It's the only name I've ever known. I thought that I would be facing an army of demons, that I would be bloody and soaked in sweat by the end of this mission. But now I was

img url But John recognized him. He’d been in the posse that had captured him. After Slade was convicted, one of his partners had finally ratted him out. It wasn’t that surprising. With a reward like that,

img url Alex jogged alongside me, and we made it into the boats eventually. We passed a soldier on the beach, who raised a hand as we rode by. “What about the rest?” I asked, turning to look back at the

img url I was groggy as I climbed from my bed, but it was the smell of smoke that really woke me up. There was a fire outside, I was sure of it. I grabbed my gear, and hurried down the stairs. It was just

img url It was an old recipe book. A tattered old recipe book. I don't know when or where it came from. It was just there, like that first dandelion in the otherwise dirtless patch of ground. Or perhaps

img url “Billy, you there!” I spun around at the sound of my name, broken from my trudging through the bone-dry, yellow grass. A wiry man and a burly Indian were galloping up to me from the west, dust

img url It was the beginning of summer when Kaelynn arrived at her new apartment in the remote town of Blue Valley, two hours out of the major metropolitan area, away from all of her connections. She was