January on the magic island: everybody gets a gift. A little "sorry you got kidnapped from your life and you're in paradise and it's kind of boring, actually," consolation.

Kim's had been more like a bad joke, like she hadn't gone weeks without playing back home before the months of drifting through this place. A drum care kit with her name on it ( Read more... )

To anyone who knows Chris Miles, the sight of him in the rec room, reading on his own might be an odd one. After all, it's the first time he's even taken a book off of the shelf, let alone read one at all. But he's been on the sofa for over an hour now, face buried in a copy of 2010's Guinness Book of World Records. Thanks to the island, Chris has ( Read more... )

As a kid, Clark had wanted nothing more than to be normal. To be your average, nothing special child from Smallville, Kansas, worried about football and book reports rather than sinister corporations and unlikely villains. The times he'd been afforded the opportunity had always come at a price, though, and the few pleasant moments he'd squeezed ( Read more... )

Tommy had never really been that fond of New Year, not in the way some people where, when they acted like it was the party of all parties. To Tommy, it was just another regular party, presenting itself as something spectacular, when in reality the spectacular thing about it was that nobody ever learned from the year before that nothing special ( Read more... )

If you had been upstairs in the Compound or in the Hub at six in the evening of December 31, you might have thought your eyes were playing tricks on you, or that you'd once again been whisked off to some strange, new place. Within the blink of an eye, the rooms had changed, sparkling instantly with festive decorations, and it was all so ( Read more... )

Tommy Flood was not one for repression.

No. He knew the outcome to that. His mother, after all, had repressed her emotions for years, and that ended with a sordid affair, and the abandonment of her husband and baby son.
However, the current situation which Tommy found himself in required a certain amount of not thinking about particular people ( Read more... )

I can't really explain why the fuck I decided I needed to do this, but it's too late to back out now. We could've spent the day just like any other, the five of us plus two extra, and maybe the girls wouldn't have noticed. But it seems more and more important every day, in ways I can't really put into words, to make the best of the time we've got ( Read more... )

Even with all the parties that I helped coordinate throughout the year, Tabula Rasa Day had become my favorite. I'm not sure who started the tradition, but civic-minded as I'd become, I appreciated the idea of us having our own, self-determined tradition that celebrated not some holiday brought from another culture, but us as a community. Half ( Read more... )

Delirium smiled to herself as she hummed quietly, wandering around the kitchen and banging various pans to the time of music only she could hear. Hearing the hiss and the pop of the sausages, Delirium shook the pan banging her spoon loudly onto the rim as she moved about. Running a hand through her hair, she pulled as much back off her face and up ( Read more... )

Wallace is considering a hut ( Read more... )