Who woulda thunk that I would like books a lot? 5/8/17

When the boy first walked into the library, his world changed. Before, he'd walked through his life, bored with the world. The same thing happened over and over, daily, and he hated everyone for it. He wanted change. He wanted excitement. He wanted a journey.

His friend had dragged him to the old library near the edge of town one day after school to use the computers. He'd expected to be bored out of his mind, just like everything else in his life. When his friend abandoned him at the doorway, he'd decided to wander. He walked through the rows and rows of books, lazily scanning his eyes over the hundreds of books. Eventually, his eyes fell on a particularly weird cover. It was crammed in at the end of the shelf, torn and forgotten. He picked it up, holding it gingerly so it wouldn't fall apart in his hands. He read the first page. Then, he read the next.

It was like the entire universe around him had transformed. He was no longer in a small town in the middle of nowhere. He was no longer a kid going to high school. He was in a whole new world, with dragons and monsters and warriors. It was all he wished he'd had, his entire life. And he wasn't bored anymore.

Wow, Turns out I'm Afraid of Leaving Home Because My Parents Might Die. Who Knew? 4/24/17

She gazed up at the sky, lazily watching the wispy clouds pass through the bright blue sky. Her headphones lay beside her in the grass, still blaring some rock song that she was listening to just to be edgy. But she didn't care about that anymore. In fact, she didn't really care about anything. How could she, with the news she'd just heard? How could she ever care about anything ever again.
She replays the phone conversation in her head, torturing herself. 'We're sorry to inform you that Alexander and Meridith Rivers have both passed away.' She remembers how monotone the voice of the police officer was, like he'd said these words a million times in his life. Like her world wasn't breaking apart around her. She'd thrown her phone across the room, smashing it to pieces. Now, hours later after she'd calmed down a bit and had a more thorough conversation with the police and doctors, she just felt numb. Her parents. Killed. Some idiot 16 year old driver had smashed into them on a bridge and pushed them off. Now they were lying cold in a morgue somewhere, waiting for her to fly back home and plan a funeral. She shut her eyes, trying not to think about it. She never should have left. She should have went to the community college in her hometown and stayed with her family. Maybe then she could have stopped it somehow. Now, she couldn't do anything. She could only stare at the miserable sky and cry and ignore the annoying rock song blaring next to her.

A Woman With Killer Skills 4/12/17

It was hard for her to stay sane after so long alone. She hadn't had human contact in years, too afraid to leave her home in the treehouse. She sometimes talked to the animals, and they sometimes talked back, but that was only when she was on the brink of letting go. She would go out foraging for food, looking for the right type of berry to eat and only finding the poisonous ones that would kill her. She would think about eating them anyways. Why not? What was stopping her? And then her sanity would come back just enough to remind her that living was stopping her, of course. Eventually, it would get to be too much work. She would hear a group of hunters wander around under her home. She would remember all the ways they'd treated her when she'd talked to them before. They'd called her a monster. A psychopath. She couldn't go down to talk to them. But why not? What would they do that was so bad? And instead of her sanity reminding her, her head was empty. So she waited until they had their backs turned, and she jumped down from her home. They spun around with fear in her eyes. She grinned at them wildly. Later, when she was using the leaves of a tree to clean the blood from her fingernails, she accepted it. It was hard for her to stay sane, so eventually, she didn't.

Cliched Female Brings the Pain 3/30/17

Megan's first heist happened when she was 15 years old. She'd only recently run away to the big city, and she was trying to make some sort of name for herself in the criminal social circles. Most legitimate crews didn't really take her seriously. To them, she was just a kid with a flashy gun who was all talk. She didn't even get to show them how wrong they were. Instead, she decided to aim for the smaller, more inconsequential crews. She cornered men and women in bars, she walked around dark alleyways, she did anything, just to get someone to pay attention to her. Yet no one did. Even the ones as new as her laughed in her face or walked away.

Eventually, she had enough. If no one would listen to her, then she would make them listen. 

She planned it perfectly. She'd trailed some backwater crew who had made fun of her one too many times. She'd hung around enough pages in the last week to understand what they were doing. The heist seemed pretty simple. There was a bank on the edge of town, faraway from the police station. Two of them would go inside and blow a hole in the side of the vault. The leader would be waiting by the car, foot hovering over the pedal. Another guy would be waiting a few blocks down with a backup vehicle, in case anything got wrong or they were split up. They didn't even have anyone to cover them. Idiots. Megan watched them through the window of a store across the street before slipping to the roof. She set up her state of the art rifle that she'd stolen in her hometown. She peered down at the scurrying people before pulling a ski mask over her face (just in case). The two men walked into the bank, and minutes later, she heard gunshots and shouting. She laughed at the panicked people below her. Only a few minutes later, much earlier than expected, she heard sirens from a few streets away. She grinned, excitedly. Finally, she'd be able to show what she was made of. The first cop car spun around the corner just as the two guys came barreling out of the bank. They shot at the growing number of cop cars speeding towards them. Megan laughed at their shaky hands, and then she began. Her first shot landed a bullet right through the first driver's head. The car spun out of control, almost immediately. The crew's heads spun around, looking for the source of the shot, but Megan was no longer paying attention of them. She calmly and quickly took out three more cop cars, forming an effective pileup. The next officers couldn't get around the wreckage, so they had to get out of their car. This made Megan's self-proclaimed job even easier. She mowed through the cops even faster, and she was very proud of herself until a bullet wizzed past her ear. She whipped her head around to look at the leader of the crew, who had come from the car to help. He stared at her with anger, but he was no match for Megan, without even thinking, shot a warning shot past his ear. He flinched, but his expression didn't change. Megan set her attention back on the task at hand. Before long, the cars stopped coming and she began to pack up her things. She made her way down the building, arriving in the alleyway to find herself surrounded by the crew. She was immediately thrown against a wall.
"Who are you?" The leader shouted at her like she was the enemy and not all the people she just killed for them. Megan rolled her eyes, slipping off her ski mask as enjoying the look of surprise that washed over their faces.
"Maybe next time you won't judge someone's skill before you've even seen it." She lightly patted his cheek and easily slipped out of his grip, slinging her duffel bag over her shoulder nonchalantly. He stuttered, failing to thank if anything to say. Megan laughed. "You're welcome by the way. You almost definitely would have died if I wasn't there to save you." She began to walk away.
"Wait," the man said. She stopped, not even bothering to turn around. "We're sorry for not taking you seriously. Would you like to be a part of our crew? Then we can start paying you back." Megan sighed, before turning back to look the man in the eye.
"Consider this your payment: spread the word. Make my name known, and maybe I'll save your life again in the future." The man cocked his head but nodded. "Thanks, dude." She shot him a sarcastic thumbs up before turning around a corner and disappearing from sight. 

This is What Happens When You're in a Hurry 3/20/2017

Once upon a night,
The stars fell from the heavens
And the world was struck with sadness
At the loss of it's favorite light.

A Heist Story that Doesn't Even Have a Heist 2/23/17

They had it all planned out, the six of them. Endless nights were spent arguing over the best vantage points and the most efficient way to get into the bank that they were planning to rob. This heist was supposed to be their big break, so they were all prepared. Jon, Seth, and Candice were to go into the bank, scare everyone into submission, and hold off the police while the resident genius, Marcus, got the monstrous vault in the back of the bank open. Megan was positioned on the roof of the rundown apartment building across the street with a sniper rifle ready to provide cover, and Jacob had the van running with his foot positioned over the pedal. They'd run over the plan hundreds of times, so when the time came for the heist to occur, no one quite understood why every little thing went wrong.

An hour after possibly the worst heist to ever go down in history, Jon, Seth, and Candice sat sulking in police interrogation rooms. They'd been roughly interrogated about who else helped them, but the police seemed to treat them as if they were just some lowlife scum of the city (which they were not, Jon kept reminding himself). They'd been caught the moment they got to the bank. Someone had noticed something under Candice's baggy shirt, and discreetly called the police, who got there seconds after the three had pulled their guns out and started waving them around. Megan saw the police coming down the street mere seconds after she'd gotten situated on her perch across the street, and made the executive decision that her friends were not worth going to jail for attempting to kill a whole squadron of police. She calmly packed up her rifle into her duffel bag and snuck away before any shots had even been fired. Jacob didn't even know how to shoot a gun correctly. That's why he was their driver. When he saw the police cars pull up, he hunkered down in his seat and hoped that some sort of miracle would stop them from searching the black van perched by the back door of the bank. Somehow, the conspicuous van was ignored, and he made his escape without a second thought about the three he'd left behind. Marcus had the easiest job, and got away by playing dumb. He'd pretended to be just another hostage as he watched his so called protectors be dragged away in a fury. The heist had failed spectacularly, and half of their crew had been obtained by the police. The other half were all too chicken to do anything about that. A week later when Megan, Marcus, and Jacob bumped into each other on a busy street, they made the executive decision to never speak of the catastrophe again and went on their merry way.

If you lack originality, you recycle. It's what you do. 2/10/2017

There once was a boy who was mad at the world. He stormed through his life like a wildfire, stopping for nothing, caring for no one. He yelled and raged at all the crimes in the world. He cursed at the innocent lives taken and the guilty men that walk free. He shouted and he cursed and he punished the world for all its wrongdoings until his knuckles were bleeding.

Eventually, he got tired. All those bloody fights and nights spent alone caught up to him. They crushed him under their weight and left him broken and alone while the world shouted good riddance! around him. They forgot about him; they left him to wallow in his loneliness and despair until he was empty inside. All he had left was that swirling, terrifying anger.