Alice was feeling quite irritated with the world when she opened the front door and discovered a folded square of paper addressed to her upon the step. The message it contained looked like gobbledygook until she remembered she’d seen this sort of thing before. Holding it up to the mirror in the hall, she
Read it now
The voices in the workroom rise until they carry out into the rest of the house, shattering my unpleasant dream.
“I never wanted it out on the market!” Father says, with more anger than he’s had energy for in a long time. “It’s not stable. Not finished!”
“There was nothing you could do
Alice slipped her helmet over her close-cropped hair and took the shuttle’s controls. When she was younger, she’d tinkered with the helmet, adding a holographic program to alter size perception, virtual reality games, and other novelties, all operated by her wrist comm. If only the helmet possessed a feature that could rescue her from
Read it now
On the way to school, Alice told her sister all about her wild adventures in Wonderland.
“Too bad it was a dream.” Her sister shrugged.
But the memories were far too vivid. Could she really have dreamed an entire book’s worth of madness? Alice couldn’t convince herself otherwise. So, after school, she returned
“Off with her head!”
“First the sentencing, then the case,” chanted the courtiers.
Alice bobbed a quick curtsy as best she could while being held between two burly guards. “If you please, Your Majesty, might I know why I’m here?”
“Don’t play coy with me, child!” The Queen pursed her lips. A scowl highlighted
“I’m telling you, someone tried to break into my house!”
Aaron sighed. “Ma’am, you said yourself that nothing was taken. And there are no signs of forced entry. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.”
It was the third time this week Ms. Takkenridge had called about a break-in, but they were always false alarms.
Footsteps creak across the upstairs floorboards, and I crack open an eye. Golden sunlight spills through the oversized bay window and across the fluffy white carpet. My tail wags. It’s my favorite time of day—one we never miss.
The air shimmers.
Miriel’s footsteps are no longer above. She’s sliding into her armchair
The air vibrated with a low, ominous hum. Usually, that meant the refrigerator was acting up again, its door rattling just enough to dislodge any unguarded treats—and my cue to position myself for any falling bits of deliciousness. But this hum… This hum was different. It was laced with the subtle snap of
Read it now
“Can you get the door, Miriel? Peaches here is a real handful,” Stephanie Brent said to me as she struggled with a little orange tabby. It snarled shrilly and scrabbled at her pink jacket’s collar. Tyler Galaro and his Shetland ponies had already arrived.
We were at Ladbrook Assisted Living—a nice place,
Miriel prided herself on noticing things others didn’t. Like the way the Grieves girl was concentrating more on a young man jogging through the park than on her chess match with the elderly gentleman in front of her. And the way the jogger, when he passed Greives by, gave a slight turn
Read it now
You loosen your tie and get out of the car into the blazing heat at the end of a long summer day. It would take too much energy to go home and cook, so takeout it is! Again.
Inside the fast-food joint, the air conditioning barely makes a dent on the swelter. The girl
“Don’t hitchhike over Kaelan Ridge,” growled the scruffy truck driver as he downed a coke outside the gas station. “No one ever makes it across.”
A rough laugh had escaped Daena’s lips at the old-timer’s warning. He obviously didn’t know Daena Austin.
* * *
“Ethel, we’ve got another drifter.”
A thin smile
Recent Comments