Slow build Stories

For you. I’m sitting in my cell. Naked. Only wearing the leather collar, which gained extra significance after yesterday. The sun shining down through the skylight woke me early in the morning. I was still tired but couldn’t stay in bed. Too restless, too confused. What happened yesterday rages like a storm in my head and lingers in my body. I found your assignment on the table. After a few attempts that end in torn paper...

The unapologetic hand on her thigh and his brazen words both seem to stick in her craw. “What?” she bites at him, forgetting all her good upbringing on purpose. In her head, her grandfather’s outraged voice echoes: “That’s ‘beg your pardon,’ girl. Mind your manners.” It falls silent the moment the feline leans in. And leans in. And leans in ever more, like a mighty oak tree might lean, or a towering sand dune. The monster...

The bird wants out. The bird wants out so bad. “Miss?” Paia flinches a little and turns her face towards the flight attendant, a lady in her forties with coral-colored lipstick and a little hat pinned to her blonde hair. The lady seems nice. Real nice. Still, Paia doesn’t dare look her in the eyes. She looks at her philtrum, instead. The philtrum is the line connecting the nose and the upper lip. Paia presses her own lips...

Naea looks around herself urgently for a second time in less than half a minute. The mountain forest on either side of the pathway seems clear of immediate threat. She digs into the dead man’s waist pouch again, drawing out the dark pebble-like device she has already felt inside it with a thrill in her heart. She knows what it is, another relic from the old world. She can hazard an educated guess that this hard drive belo...

She moves in new orbits suddenly, on some dating binge it seems, dating all and any who appeal to her recently unveiled acceptance that she's a "slut." That's her word, not mine. She didn't just break out of her shell, that would be putting it way too mildly. No, she fucking bursts right out of the end of some damn circus cannon. That's her flying over there, flying all over town, all over the seat of your car, all over t...