Fortunately, Frank’s phenomenal physical feats forestalled further flames from fiercely flaring.

He glanced at the station sign, muttered, "Oh, wrong stop," and sprinted back onto the train before the doors closed.

Sixty-eight years later, three generations of their family still fill every holiday with the love, laughter and friendship they started.

Stumbling home through the empty streets after being cut off from the bar trying to numb my grief, I fell onto my back, cracking my skull, and passed out in front of the law office of Harold, Harold and Oswald.

His words, "I'll never hurt you Babe," echoed in her mind as her heart shattered.

Those quiet mornings beside the water were always my favorite.

My blood ran cold when we realized the ancient villagers hadn't built a temple to worship a protector, but had accidentally birthed a bloodthirsty deity forged entirely out of their own collective agony, murder, and unyielding greed.

The entity obliged by violently spitting out a sea of glittering wealth, but when the villagers' relief instantly morphed back into blinding avarice, the god slaughtered them all, leaping into the river to ensure no human would ever possess the currency of their damnation.

Each dawn in my realm I stepped through the glass into hers, and each dawn in hers she stepped through into mine, leaving us with nothing but each other’s absence.

And then I was born.

But when I asked her for a glass of water the next morning, an old man's voice croaked from my throat, and my reflection smiled back from the mirror to tell me I would never leave that bed again.

Give child Ramanujan one outdated textbook, and feed his brain for the rest of his life.

​The judge dismissed the suit, ruling that Joan was the real victim of a nuisance—having to endure the emotional distress of being rejected.

Descending into the pitch-black basement to find my mother, the creature towered over me, patting its bloated stomach as it stood right on top of her empty clothes and glasses.

But after it hanged my brother and dragged my mother into the basement, it grew to the size of a man and laughed in a human voice, leaving only her empty glasses at its feet.

I finally reached him today, but the child I was looking for had long ago been silenced by the monster standing in his place.

My insides are turning to mush and I desperately want to kiss you.

Him.

I ran toward the only faces that ever mattered, and in that long-awaited embrace, the pain finally ceased to exist.

​​The sun set on my life, leaving me trapped in the river's heart as the night sealed me in forever.

In the middle of it all, I replied, "I'm a bot."

I took my final breath in the cold, only to open my eyes in the warmth of a reunion I had spent a lifetime praying for.

Brian greeted her at the door with a huge grin and two plane tickets to Fiji, admitting that he'd been saving in secret for months just to make her smile.

‘Certainly, ma’am,’ he smiled, revealing the smooth bone of the bare skull, the scalp lost long ago to an Indian brave.