SenoritaRin

Reaching       She was laying on the ground when it happened. The thick darkness of the closed-off room pressed in on her, the humid heat sweeping over her skin. It started with a heartbeat, a tiny little sound, tapping against her ribs. Breathing in and out, slowly, she felt the heartbeat scatter and slow, scatter and slow. Then it doubled. There was another heartbeat in the room, in her ears, in her veins. She set her hand on her ribs and pressed down against soft skin, feeling for the pulse. The double heartbeat tripped against her fingers, two beats, one right after the other. Moving her hand up to her neck she felt the thick vein t

Empty      The window was warm against her cheek, jolted slightly by the motion of the bus. Dull brown landscape slid past, too monotonous to make an impression, the same scene she'd been staring at for miles. The cacti stood stark against the too-blue sky, and she felt small. She thought idly how dirty the bus window must be, and how many other faces had leaned there, but decided it didn't matter. She wasn't that clean anyway.       Fingering her dark, greasy hair, she sighed and slid her eyes across the aisle. A vast man of immense proportions spilled across the seats directly across from hers. He scratched idly at his rolling, fleshy s

I. I heard the rooks outside the tower window and I thought they were coming to take me. Their terrible voices mingled with the raucous alarm bells in my mind and I heard their words. Sounds filled the tower. Voices and footsteps and shouts. They were drowning out the voices of the rooks. I strained to hear the rooks. Everything hurt, all over, and I wanted them to come and take me. I let my breathing slow. My skin was burning, hot to the touch, but I shivered beneath my blankets. A heaviness filled my body and I couldn't move. I turned my head, just barely, to look out the window. Snow whirled dizzily through the windowpane against a

        Barsek glared at the glove compartment as he drove, paying little attention to the road. The car careened down the highway, dodging traffic and narrowly missing pedestrians when he turned too close to the sidewalks. When the phone rang, he was so lost in thought he jumped two lanes of traffic while he scrabbled for the irritating, persistent ringing sound. Finally he grabbed the slim silver phone, glared at it, and flipped it open. “Yeah?”     “Where the hell are you, Barsek? I’ve been waiting for two hours!”       Inwardly he groaned. “Ma, I just…”       “Just nothing! Two hours, you

Sparrow Falls Prologue It began during the mysterious hours of the night, when everything was still and nothing was like itself. The moon burned in the sky; that was the first sign. It burned red as the roses that bloomed, dripping real blood. It burned against a sky with no stars, and it burned like the shower of venomous rain that spilled onto the dark earth. By the time the golden dawn came, normal as breathing, the rains were gone but the blood and roses remained. May woke early, and the first things she saw were the rusty stains trailing down the dusky wall of her tiny room in the Library. There was one window, a large frosted window

The tiny frog perched carefully on the edge of the teacup, balancing delicately and doing his best to seem inconspicuous. No one had noticed him yet, but they would. For now he listened, focusing far more intently than any frog ever had. “No, we’re not going to…” “But I thought you said-” “Quiet! Somebody might be listening!” The man’s voice was panicked, and the frog watched him look around. He didn’t think to look at the teacup. The frog lowered his body, and when the sound of a passing truck drowned out all sound he quietly plopped into the lukewarm tea. With only his protruding eyes go