Getaway: Parts 8 & 9
_ **Part 8** _ There wasn't a chance in hell of carrying on with my planning... or relaxing... or doing anything beyond discarding myself on the bed of this dead, lonely hotel room. Outside, life went on. I watched the evening sky turn to black,...
Writer's Block
_ **Writer's Block** _ "None of this works!" I launched my pen clear across the desk. The pad I used to jot down ideas followed it right after. These blank pages glaring back just pissed me off even more. It'd been forever and a day since I'd managed...
Boiling Point
_ **Boiling Point** _ My walk from the station was more like a swim, the swampy summer morning air even more overwhelming and oppressive than the metro journey that'd got me there. A journey made up of three trains, two transfers, and nearly an entire...
Lost & Found
_ **Lost & Found** _ The air stifled so very much. Even on a morning that was not so hot, how difficult it was to breathe came as the first thing to my notice upon disembarking the train. To walk through the streets, the crowded, overloaded streets,...
Laundry Day
_ **Laundry Day** _ A mistake, a blunder, a five-star screw-up: whichever way you dressed it, avoiding my laundry for as long as I had done wouldn't be repeated. Each hefty haul of my overflowing wash basket was a struggle, sending scrapes and grinds...
Getaway: Part 6
_ **Part 6** _ Sunday evening wound up being the perfect time for our first trip out for dinner. Compared to our first pass of Ibarra's earlier that day... it still wasn't quiet, for sure, but it'd got way less busy. From what I'd seen of Arlone so...
Knock Knock
_ **Knock Knock** _ 'Cut through the apartment complex Danny, they said. It'll shave ten minutes off your walk to the station, they said. Man, _they_ were chattin' some utter shite with all that. Never mind this place being a maze of identical three...
Shallow Goals
_ **Shallow Goals** _ "Got you, Cloud!" I almost choked on a mouthful of chlorinated water, yelling out so fast after climbing back to the surface. "You're it!" "No way!" my brother cried above all the splashing and yapping in the pool around us....
Wrecked
_ **Wrecked** _ I wanted to die. Lucky as I might've been not to have done so already. Here in the dark, up in the hills in the middle of only gods knew where, I sat staring past the cracks in my windscreen. Better that than at the petrified polecat...
Theatre of War
Theatre of War "Move, move!" People rushed past me, running for their lives. "Keep going!" Screams of terror cut the air. "Don't stop!" A clap of thunder overtook us all. The asphalt rumbled. The screaming got louder. I fought hard to stay...
Rooftops (Request for Jidza10)
_ **Rooftops** _ _For Jidza10_ "You feeling okay, Jed?" I glanced up at Mitch from my doodle pad. "Why?" "You've not touched your lunch is all." The wolf gestured his fork down to the spicy chicken I must've picked out for myself, congealing in its...
Lunchtime at Riki's (AaO Universe Side Story)
_ **Lunchtime at Riki's** _ "Things are gonna be okay," I called up to Zoran, backing away from the doorway of our apartment as he stormed in with the morning's mail in paw. "Don't get worked up about it." "Don't get worked up!?" he boomed,...