I stick my hand into the werewolf's mouth, palm grazing rows and rows of canines. Searching for a loose - Ah ha, got it. The tooth comes out clean, and white. Not enough glue, not enough paint.

"Can we get some more yellow on this?" I toss the tooth at Mark. It dings off his forehead and hits the floor. "We're making a werewolf, not a telletubby."

Mark paints a thin layer of yellow-ish brown on ...

I turned on the television to see what I could view, and had only been watching for an hour or two, when a commercial came on with a face that I knew, asking if I wanted to make more money. “I sure do!”

She spoke as if speaking directly to me, offering career training or a GED, and told me I could even get a college degree, and she would send all the information to me toll free!

I thought for a ...

In a town called Westfield, at the end of Pinewood Road, there stood a once-magnificent manor house, peering down from its perch atop the hill. The house had steeply-pitched gable roofs that pierced the murky sky around them. More than a few shingles were missing, which made the roofs look speckled from a distance. The wrap-around porch was largely intact, but one of the ornately-carved ...

Visiting my grandfather in North Carolina was nothing short of a civic wonderland. Before my feet had even crossed the flaxen welcome mat, I was being ordered, per our routine, to list each US state and capital in alphabetical order.

"_Let's hear it, Cheyenne..._" he would govern.

And, like a soldier appeasing his Lieutenant, I would begin to rattle names off.

"_Alabama, Montgomery. Alaska, ...

*Cough, Cough* The haggard man slices roots off the vast outcroppings of trees to secure his meal for the day. Tired, sweaty, unkempt, the greenery surrounding him moved with his every breath. In and out, step by step, he made it to the heart of the forest which held his home.

“Ojun!” He shouted, the deep timbre of his voice resonating throughout the overgrown camp. A long haired, bronze...

“The art is what you start from as much as what you are left with.”

Glömd unwraps the parcel he has been clutching since entering the workshop. Even under the dim glow of scattered lamps, the specular metal streaks a sharp reflection across the room. “No one knows the full history of what they wear, but I like to think the metal remembers.” His marbled hands soundlessly slide the silver plate in...

Ruby sat in her living room staring out the window at the misty fog hovering over the ground. She thought about her life and how grateful she was to have her passions. Her greatest passion was books. They were the one thing she couldn’t live without.

Everyone has that one thing they love. Ruby’s is reading. It’s her thing.

Nowadays, it’s almost rare to catch somebody reading a book. She would se...

See over there, inside that little brick-walled shop on Kensington Street? That’s me, with the unevenly-cut jet-black hair and long dress, rearranging jars of goat eyes for the tenth time this hour. The hair nor the compulsive organizing are by choice. The former is thanks to a spell gone sour, which resulted in sentient scissors seeking to punish me for bending them once when I needed to jimmy a ...

The Anaa’ji begins at dawn. Pink streaks fragment the sky and the fat red sun is swallowed, then spit out by marshmallow clouds, so that every face in the ceremony is only half-illuminated. Light, shadow. Evil, purity. Evil has swarmed this small Navajo town, and the ritual is a cleansing. The rhythmic chants, rising in volume and passion, wake Mary, who has overslept and curses her inadequate al...

Jeanne closed her eyes, focusing on the familiar weight of a watch cradled between her weathered hands. Claire de Lune floated from the radio in the corner, the soft notes of the ballad transporting Jeanne to a moment long gone. The composition was by her father's favorite composer - the French savant Claude Debussy.

The music continued playing, but suddenly, Jeanne was no longer sitting at her ...