“I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.” - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Oh, no...This is it..." Janet thought. "The past repeating itself...In my head..."
She opened her eyes to see herself back in time as a child, frightened and powerless attempting to defend herself and her three younger sisters against Lord Shadowcraft. Before her were her beloved mother and father, nailed at the shoulders to a sacrificial wood plank. Lord Shadowcraft, with just a wave of his hand pushed the four children against the wall, putting great force agaist them to ensure that escape was impossible.

Thanks Kids. Nothing accents my new window fixers like a mangled mess of blinds.
Thanks Kids. The Crayons not only seem to work on paper, but also on every wall in every room of the house.
Thanks Kids. Grandma's petunias look good pulled from their roots and scattered all over her yard.

The music was roaring throughout the house. The house lights were off but it was blindingly bright inside due to a strobe light in every room. Every room was just about filled with seventeen year olds, most were holding red solo cups, I assumed they were filled with alcohol. Only Jen and I weren't drinking.

"Can we go Nick?", Jen shouted to me over the music.

"Sure do you have your stuff?", I asked. She nodded.

         His fingers glided effortlessly across the recently-polished keys of the grand piano, worn and bony with years of practise and experience yet still darting swiftly over the keys as if he were young, resulting in a soothing melody waltzing around the air, so beautiful the birds nestling on the window pane began to sing along. His deep set brown eyes shifted from his hands to the wrinkled sheet of paper, marked with black music notes, and he followed them with precise knowledge.
         Beside him on the plush leather seat sat his student, a male college student who was attempting to learn piano to present his girlfriend with the perfect Valentine gift; the ring-binder, stuffed with his numerous attempted at romantic song writing, rested next to his schoolbag, trapped in the shadowy corner of the spacious room they sat in. The boy watched in awe as the player’s fingers danced over the keys, his brain struggling to keep up with such musical beauty.

Kodiak's plan was to ride the buses until he ran out of money, which happened a lot sooner than he'd hoped. With the last of his money he bought sandwiches out of a vending machine at the Greyhound depot in Delta, Michigan. If he could have afforded to go another couple hundred miles he'd be at the Canadian border but Northern Michigan appealed to him with it's endless stretches of lakes and woods. Kody slipped the sandwiches into his knapsack and started walking up the shoulder of I-75. Seven miles north of Delta he skipped over the ditch and disappeared into the woods of the Delta Highlands. He walked due east for four days before coming to the base of Remington Mountain. He barely took a moment before starting to climb. The mountain was not nearly as big as the Rockies but it was a challenge and Kody met the challenge like a man. His sandwiches had run out long ago and he was quite happy foraging for berries and the odd rabbit.

When I was eight years old my mama gave birth to a little baby boy. It was an ugly thing, all purple and shriveled up, shaking its tiny fists at the world and bleating like an angry little goat. His name was Benjamin, after my grandpa, and I had never seen my mama so happy in her life. Don't get me wrong, she loved me just the same, but I think Benjiman was that missing piece in her life, the light that had been missing from her eyes. Only one morning she walked into the nursery to found him laying there all pale looking, his tiny little chest static. I remember I was mad at Benjiman for leaving us, and for doing that to my mama, my hero.

The editor stared back at the two detectives that were standing in his office. He still wasn't sure what they were after.

"Mr. Hetchit, you've seen the letters haven't you?"

"Of course I have! They were addressed to me remember?"

"And you understand them?"

"Barely! The grammar was atrocious! It took me almost 15 minutes to make the needed changes!"

The two detectives looked at one another in disbelief. They'd never seen anyone receive death threats and then edit them for grammatical errors.

         At first, everything looked the same. The same forest, stretching endlessly ahead of me. The same fields, half-plowed from the day’s early harvests. The same cold Harvest night air. It was always cold at night. But on this night, new warmth swept into the breeze, bringing along the scents of burning wood, the sound of crackling flames lapping stones, and as I turned my head, the destruction was obvious. On the familiar hill before me, the village glowed with an unnatural orange, shining in the night sky like a torch. I was surprised to see stars, although I don’t know why. The sky formed a dome above me, like a black circle. The trees were a circle too, locking me tight within them as the flames engulfed my village. Circles aren't supposed to break. They're supposed to go around and around at a dizzying rate, and not spin out of control like this. I used to compare my life to a circle, but now I wasn't sure that it was the right term.

"Heads, we get married; tails, we break up."

I hear this as I hide in plain site, listening and watching.

At the bar sits a couple, not far from my table. The woman is wearing a formal, pyramid style sun hat; it has a wide brim, round and wavy, Bloody Mary red. Her cotton-like hair falls to the shoulders of a Chambord purple wool coat.

The man is darkly tanned. His hair is slicked, like a fifties greaser, and a cigarette behind his ear, unfiltered. The collar of his shirt is slightly lifted, unbuttoned, revealing tufts of chest hair that matches what's on his head, the color of a White Russian with too much cream. He's holding a bronze coin, roughly the size of a half-dollar, embossed with a 36 inside a circle inside a triangle. I'd seen it before, at AA meetings. The number is how many years you've stayed sober. Your anniversary.