Dan stared at the ceiling of the camper van. He figured he must have been awake for at least two hours. The hot and humid night didn’t help, but he mainly couldn’t sleep because his brain wouldn't shut off. He couldn't stop thinking about his failed marriage, the what ifs and what could have been of the past, and the feeling of heaviness pulling him down. Dan turned to his side. The woman next to him, Lyse, looked to be f...

We are in a shallow bay, out of the wind, and the fish are obviously sleeping. After trolling around for a while I decide to drop anchor, coasting to the middle where the water was deepest. The splash of the anchor going over is the loudest noise in the bay. The sun is high, hot but not strong, and I bait my hook and drop my line over the side, laying the rod in its holder. I watch her do the same. With her hat and sungla...

"I can totally see that in you, Master. If I had been in school with you, I would have followed you too... like a little puppy!" she said. "jewel, my dear, had we met in school we may not be together now at all. It took what we went through to make us appreciate what we have now. Had I not had the pitfalls and stumbles and mistakes I made, I wouldn't know just what a treasure you are. You don't how good it is to be full u...

Pete’s eyes flutter open as cool droplets of rain fall upon his face. Everything is blurry, confusing. He squints through the streaks and droplets clinging to his glasses.  He’s outside. When did he go outside? Raindrops splash on the top of his head, reminding him of his expanding bald spot and matting his thinning, scraggly hair as he gazes ahead. He’s standing alone in a clearing, staring into a thick, dark forest just...

My boyfriend Mark was getting his things ready to go to his family's cabin at Douglas Lake, which was about an hour and a half's drive from Asheville Tennessee, where we both lived. He had shown me pictures of the small cabin his family had at the lake and I had always thought it was so beautiful there. Especially this time of year with all the fall colors on the trees... it was like a picture postcard. "Oh Mark, I wish I...

It was an unseasonably cold night in October and Amber Shelton had had a bad feeling. She would have them from time to time, the bad feelings. When she was a little girl she would call them her feels. They were relatively infrequent, and there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for when they would occur. Most of the time, they never amounted to much, like being able to predict a happening or see the future. Most of the...

Rick Peterson and Amanda King were a couple of second-year college kids on Spring Break in Cancun, Mexico. They decided to go there this year instead of dealing with the mobs and hassles of Spring Break in Palm Beach, Florida they had experienced the previous year. On this particular day, though the pair decided to check out this quaint little lake he had heard about from some of his friends who had been there before. So...

The sun ascended to its apex highTraversing dawn’s rich clementine skyBurning off the morning veilOf misty haze so thin and frailThat it hung amid the old oak treesMotionless without a breezeEthereal as a silken shroudAnd humid as diluted cloudThat rolled in from the verdant shoreTo creep across the forest floorDrawing us to where reeds sweepAnd bowed willows gently wither weepCasting shadows on the surface stillWhere dro...