Prom is tomorrow and I have a giant red, cat-eye slotted eye staring back at me in the center of my forehead.

You know, it’s not like I asked to be prom queen or anything, but this? Now I’m not even going to be able to walk through the doors.

I like at it, hoping it’s just a figment of my imagination, but when I feel the slightly stinging pain, coupled by some tears—oh my god are those, is that ...

She catches the Black Gem flowering in the corner of the garden in the periphery of her vision. She turns and leads straight for it, curling her hands around the buds with consideration, eyes narrowing while her mouth tips up into a smile.

There’s a groove in the ground from where a tire once lay, smack tracks from its ridged edge are still left behind like footprints. Water gathered there during...

So this is what happens when you don’t use sunscreen....

“Would it be weird if I took this home?”

He’s holding a dead raven in his hands, mostly skeletal remains that still have some flesh and feathers clutching to it.

And he wants to know if it’d be weird?

She blinks. “Yes, yes it would be, you absolute freak.”

He frowns down at the body, but not in any way she approves of. It’s less “I’ve learned my lesson” and more “surely not everyone would agre...

“I’m sorry,” he says, holding the photo by the corner, as if it’s a bloodied rag. “Can you repeat that?”

“Oh you heard me,” his mom says, rolling her eyes and continuing to fold the laundry, like a fucking psycho. “Your father had a family, awhile ago.” She waves her hand, like she’s talking about the weather being too hot, too cold, and not that his father had a secret family he’d never spoken t...

“Over the Wintry” by Natsume Sōseki

Over the wintry

Forest, winds howl in rage

With no leaves to blow

When she returns to consciousness, she only wishes it were over.

“—just dropped like a rock. Oh my god what is wrong? Is something wrong with her? Call an ambulance. Someone call an ambulance right now and tell them the—“

She groans loudly and rolls over, but she can’t bring herself to open...

Once you are caught, that’s the end, they say.

Now he knows it to be true.

His tail catches against the cage again, pulling against the fur in a startling and painful way. The woman is in the small room with him, and she seems to hear his cry and makes one of her own. It’s a lilting sound, something he can’t quite understand the meaning of, but he understands the intent. She means to comfort him...

The leaf settles on the ground, the wind having done its job and carrying it from the branch to the uneven stones of a busy street.

The leaf is lost, and so afraid. It panics, struggles upward, and the breeze ignores it. It trembles on the ground, alone. Where have all of the others gone?

Its epic is one that is just beginning; part of nature flows from above to the ground, to find itself part o...

You shakily bring the cigarette to your lips and light it. It ignites and the tip glows a bright, warning orange. You’re sweating, so you wipe your forehead with the back of your hand. You inhale and the comfort of the smell, the Smokey, acrid taste is all you know for a blessed three seconds.

The Author is looking for you, everyone is saying, and now your mouth goes dry and you take another inha...

You might think the Tavern on the Water was the place where the vagabonds went, and you’d be right, in a way.

The vagabonds, the delinquents, the gamblers, this was the spot they all were drawn to. But the Tavern on the Water wasn’t the place for them to be themselves, no, it was the place they went to be other than themselves, for them to be the people they wanted to be. When they were tired of...