Nothing had to jiggle his walkman a few times, drained batteries and overused cassette tape rattling around inside, to get it to play. There was sand in the workings and he could hear it grate every time he ejected a tape, the black plastic worn and sunbleached. But Nothing came out at night, not because he had to, but because everything was always ( Read more... )

Eddie was sans child this morning and moving around the kitchen all the quicker for it. Said child had managed to get into the jam the moment Eddie brought her into the kitchen, so said child was now enjoying a nice warm bath while her mum tried to get bits of strawberry and gelatin out of her hair ( Read more... )

Saffron should have been happy - ruttin' ecstatic, even. She'd come back from her coffee that morning to find a pretty wrapped package on her bed, tagged with her name, and unwrapped it to find a beautifully sleek, if unfamiliar gun. It was just what she'd been wanting, ever since she'd shown up on the island, and it had even come with a nice ( 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... )

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... )

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... )

On an island of some three hundred people, give or take, news spread fast. There was gossip and rumor to contend with, but there was hard fact, too, and that was hard to hide in a population that size, especially when Eden knew those involved ( Read more... )

Lewis used to get me to tell him kid's stories to practice my sequencing. Stupid shit, but it helps, sometimes, to think about something that has a definate beginning, middle and end ( Read more... )

The weather kept Nancy in the Compound most of the time these days. She wasn't really sure what to do with herself. Mostly, she read romance novels and made brownies (the normal sort) and kept the coffee brewing. She thought about asking someone to teach her to play the piano (she could remember very little from the year of lessons she took as a ( Read more... )

The Fisher home had boxes and boxes of carefully packed, labeled and organized Christmas decorations stowed safetly in the attic. All tasteful, of course, because it wouldn't do to do the house up with a whole bunch of frills and tastelessness when you had families filing in and out all through the holidays, mourning the loss of loved ones. Death ( Read more... )