Prompts 2

Prompt: You have fallen in love.

For months, I had had time to accustom myself to the sight of Heather walking away across the bridge, a pleasant spring in her gait and the pastel glows of a sunset sky offering a backdrop for our parting that was almost too romantic. For months, I had watched her disappear time after time and struggled to swallow down that exact same lump of longing that rose up in my throat and made me wish she didn't have to leave, even if I'd see her again the very next day.

She was the only person I knew who had so much in common with me, who was so much fun to be around, or who was so wonderfully compassionate. She made me feel... wanted. Appreciated. And I had never told her how much I valued that acceptance.

Over the past months, though I didn't quite know how I felt about the fact, I'd come to realise something. I was falling in love with this one-of-a-kind girl.

Prompts 1

Prompt: You wish you hadn't said what you just said.

I had a habit of blurting things out without thinking them through. More often than not, it got me into quite a bit more trouble than it was worth; trouble from which even my way with words tended not to save me. Judging now from the look upon Alyssia's face, a combination of deathly sorrow and seething disgust at what I'd just said about her elder brother Michael, this was one of those moments.

I'd have had a bit more tact if I'd known Michael had been killed.

Almost of their own accord, I felt my reactions spread across my face one after the other; a wide-eyed stare of horrified realisation, the parting of my mouth in a vain attempt to muster an answer, then a pained grimace of disappointment in myself for having said such a vile thing.

Interesting Exchanges: The Expansion

"James broke my radiator."

"What? How'd he manage that?"

"By being fat, I dunno... All I heard was this loud bang, followed by, "Oh, shit, sorry dude."" Josh, saying this in his usual snark-tinged drawl, gave a shrug of resignation as if he wasn't quite sure how James had succeeded in breaking his central heating.

"That's New Year's Eve for you," I chuckled in response, shaking my head. Far-fetched as Josh's little tale was, I found it somehow believeable - in that only James could pull off something like it. "Me, I was out on the town. Six in the morning when I finally got in."

"And you got wasted off... what, exactly?" came Josh's reply. The way he subtly cocked an eyebrow in incredulity didn't escape my notice. Was it so hard to believe that I of all people had enough social skill to have gone out on New Year's Eve?

"Wasted's a rather strong word," I sighed. "As much as I'd have loved to be thoroughly off my face the whole night, I was sobering up by the time I got home. Kopparberg, mostly, but the stuff gets a bit sickly after about three bottles..."

Interesting Exchanges

"James broke my radiator."

"What? How'd he manage that?"

"By being fat, I dunno... All I heard was this loud bang, followed by, "Oh, shit, sorry dude.""

Through the Peephole

by Ross Butterly

I couldn't avoid answering the door forever. Swallowing as if to drive down my apprehension, I turned the handle and pulled the door open. The officer almost collapsed across the threshold, staggering unsteadily into my home.

"Thank God you're in," he panted, sounding as though even that short utterance had sent waves of pain through his body. He clutched weakly at a gaping wound in his side, trying to hold shut a collection of vicious cuts and tears in his flesh. I stifled a wretch at the sight as his hand slid away, and hurriedly led him across the room, lowering him onto my sofa with great care.

"What the hell happened to you?" I shot back. I hadn't heard such urgency in my own voice in a long time.

"I have no idea," he groaned. His blood had already begin to seep into the upholstery, but that was the least of my concerns at the moment. I doubled back across the room, shutting the front door. "I was chasing a youth brandishing a knife into the old mill across the way," he continued, "and some... thing attacked me."

I dreaded to imagine what kind of weapon - or what kind of person - could inflict such a wound.

Snow-tal War: Part 1

The Cold War Heats Up
by Ross Butterly

"Do you see anything?" came the muffled whisper of my squaddie, Josh, over my shoulder.

No, I didn't. If it had been difficult to discern any movement through the endless fields of white ten minutes ago, before this latest blinding snowfall, it was nigh-impossible now... which was why I didn't see the snowball coming until it got acquainted with Josh's face.

He fell backwards with a cry of surprise and a faceful of snow. Ducking behind our impromptu wall, the two of us hugged our cover and watched a wave of snowballs fly over our heads. Josh spluttered with indignation, wiping his face down, and peeked over the wall with a sneer. "Where the bloody hell did that come from?"

"Get back to me when you can see through this blizzard," came my equally irritable retort. I kept low, scooping up a ball of my own and packing it down in my gloved hands, then tossed it blind over our low snow wall. A dull thud and shout of angered surprise told me I'd landed a hit.

"Do we run for it?" Josh asked off-hand, hurling his second retaliatory snowball. The shots of our unseen foes landed around us, occasionally thudding against our rather feeble excuse for cover.

"Can't fight what we can't bloody see," I answered, hazarding a glance over the wall. Through the veils of falling snow I glimpsed them; half a dozen swift grey figures across the field, their low voices of command and acknowledgement upon the air. With those kind of numbers against just the two of us, we were soon to be flanked and overrun.

Just the stories of what these damned Raptors did to their prisoners told me not to let that happen.

"No way we can hold this," I muttered, my grudging reluctance clear in my tone. "Pack it up and let's get out of here."

"Amen to that," Josh responded. Quickly hurling his last snowball in defeat, he grabbed his bag and turned with me; and under the cover of the thickening snowfall, we crouched low and made a run for it across the field, leaving our attackers to claim our weak defence. The Raptors had won this skirmish quite easily with an admittedly well-coordinated surprise attack under the cover of a veritable blizzard. No way we could've been ready for it, and they knew it; but when we returned to retake what was ours, it would be with numbers and force beyond their reckoning.

Year after year, we had waged these winter wars over Christmas, and year after year we had held this field without fail. I would give myself up personally before I saw it kept by the Raptors at December's end.