Him

Lily accepted the charm from David and cherished the thoughtfulness of the gift from her childhood friend. The epiphany wouldn’t strike until decades later, when she finally opened the box labeled “Memories”; a box that had moved with her four times, but hadn’t once been opened since it was sealed sixteen years earlier. Most wouldn’t think much of a laminated blue three-leaf clover, but most people didn’t know Lily and David; their secrets and inside jokes were legendary, and this memento represented a moment that took too long for Lily to understand. They shared a belief that “luck” came from “uniquity”, and that “four-leaf clovers” merely represented that; but with the prevalence of “unique” charms being sought and presented, it would require something even more unique to bring luck in modern days. Lily rubbed the clover between her finger and thumb, only now realizing what David had tried to tell her long ago… before he took  his life.

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Who Are You

Ben fumed with frustration and helplessness, feeling his fists ball up like a reflex, clenching his teeth and looking down at the floor as Tommy unleashed a torrent of insults, a monologue of dehumanizing vitriol, and then it stopped; in less-than-an-instant there was a depth of suffocating silence Ben had never experienced, absolute silence, not even a static wave of ambient noise. He looked up and the scene around him was frozen; Tommy, his classmates, time had ceased for all but him. When time began again, they were in each others’ shoes; Tommy felt Ben’s insecurity and loneliness, his confusion at why he was picked on, his desire to be invisible. And Ben felt Tommy’s contempt, his anger at this smartass, who thought he was better than everyone and refused to fit in with the other kids. Again the silence came, but this time both Ben and Tommy were unaffected, and they stared at one another with new understanding.

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Sleeper

Stanley twisted and pulled apart the nesting doll, one by one, until he revealed the final little girl, which looked strikingly different from the other iterations; even more curious, there was an apparent seam across its belly, though he couldn’t imagine anything small enough to fit inside. He gave it a quick twist and tug but it refused to separate; after struggling for several minutes, he bit down on the head and pulled on the bottom with a pair of pliars until it finally cracked open with a blinding burst of light. As Stanley lay stunned on the floor he feared the worst, then he saw a figure made of billowing silver smoke looming above him and died convinced he had had a stroke; weakened by thousands of years of captivity, the Figure couldn’t afford to waste time pretending to be a wish-granting genie, It needed to feast and regain strength first.

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Pangs

The Merlin continued, despite the sting of the cold wind on his face. He didn’t have time to stop, not yet; he was still a thousand miles from his destination, soaring through the Southwest. He saw a stitch of dragonflies ahead and tilted slightly to the left, flitting his wings and picking up speed; he hadn’t eaten since the evening before – a small prairie dog, strayed too far from his lair – the bugs wouldn’t be much, but hopefully they would hold him long enough. The Merlin missed, the dragons scattered, and before he could loop around for another pass, the steel ball from a child’s brand-new pellet gun struck his wing, sending him to the cold, hard ground.

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