*The thralls are all leaving...* Jade told Alyssa, craning her draconic head out of the shattered cockpit and sweeping her sharp-eyed gaze across the hangar. Alyssa swung out of the breached canopy and crouched on the Raptor's roof. *Quick, Dana... the runes!* *Okay...* the redhead agreed, her telepathic voice aching with grief. As much as Alyssa felt the...
(Age of Decadence) Lies and deceit leading on, the maelstrom swirls us back. We return to where we began. PROLOGUE: Mucia Faustina was seated on the third level of the amphitheater, the maenianum summum, the section allocated to women. On the roof above her the poor, the pullati, stood to watch the games. Fortunately she was in the first row of seats ab...
In his comments on my story 'A View from the Bottom' 'Oldmarriedtar' stated that there is no cure for depression, and I tend to agree with him. My personal experience with depression is that there are three avenues open, the first is the chemical approach and this may be necessary to stabilise the condition, but it is not a cure. The second and third can be...
Chapter 1: Where There's Smoke... Annika Whenever I sit out on my balcony (and I say 'balcony' with a great sense of irony, but my humble studio apartment with its fenced ledge suits me and my needs just fine) and light a joint, I always do so inconspicuously. Or so I hope. I've deliberately woven ivy and fairy lights around two-thirds of the wrought...
Chapter 1: Friday Morning, 8:54AM – Life's A Lot More Fun When You Aren't Responsible For Your Actions "Oh, fuck!" Will slid his arms up along the back of the girl's shirt as her torso bonelessly tipped away from him. Her legs were still locked around his hips, a sticky mess between them at the place where they were joined together. "Not the most gracefu...
Episode I: Harbinger Chapter 1 "What is going on down there?" Nute Gunray demanded from the bridge of the Trade Federation flagship Saak'ak. A cacophony of alarms sounded all around him. "We've lost the transmission, sir." his communications officer Tey How announced from behind her comlink and data goggles. "Have you ever encountered a Jedi Knight befor...
I got into a bit of a creative slump in December. I felt like nothing I wrote was any good. To get out of the slump, I read my favorite books and tried to imagine additional stories set in their worlds. It came to naught, until I re-read Over_Red's story "Dream Drive", which he published on this very site. I managed to conjure up a character and sent him on...
Day 1 Sara was angry with her parents. She was smart, one of the smartest people in her high school class, and in her mind she knew she shouldn't be upset, and that the anger was just part of some teenage emotional misfire. But her parents knew she'd had a date planned for this weekend, and they'd brought her camping anyway. And since the summer had just be...
BOOK ONE Sunrise and bad weather on the Prairie can be a site of sadistic beauty -- A frightening thing, like a lion loosed from its cage while the tamer sleeps. Often when the weather is bad I am restless, sitting up nights or rising early before the dawn to walk out and watch the rainfall when sleep won't come to me. The summer nights have only just beco...
Chapter 14 I woke to the sound of typing. She wasn't being loud about it, not trying to be obnoxious, it was just the soft clicky-clack of the keys of her keyboard as she fired off whatever she was writing. She had the same tendency I did however, to hit the end of a sentence harder, giving the keyboard a nice, soft whack every time. Just some unconscious...