He felt her in every seed she might have sown, in every tree she might have grown. He felt her in every beat of his heart and every pulse of his blood, the part that she would have fixed. He felt her absence so sharply. She lay in her coffin deep in the clay dirt, under a roll of green plastic grass that failed to conceal the raw ugliness of a ( Read more... )

He abandoned me. He ruined me, seduced me into loving him, and then destroyed me utterly by leaving me alone. The village folk knew. I'd strutted past them with head held high when he'd been with me, believing that true love had elevated me above them all. I'd thought that I'd never have to go back to my family, such as it was. So when he left, he ( Read more... )

Their chests ticked when they walked past her store, and the ticks dragged slower as they headed home at the end of the day, where their faithful wives would feed them dinner and put away their shoes and wind their stopwatch hearts. A gold chain went from their pocket to where there used to be a fob watch, but she knew that the chain went through ( Read more... )

The light of love glowed through them when they looked at each other, strands of future hope and possibility filamenting around them until they lit up the space around them. She smiled. Yes, they would be very profitable. Those alien species who could see such things would view the pair as a true treasure of art. "Yes, I think I can find employment ( Read more... )