dreamszilla

Nora is coming up to her 16th birthday, and her demanding mother has got her an extreme gift. Image generated with OpenAI Nora reached out for the juice cup, but before she could grab it, her mother hit her hand. "Not now, Nora! We'll be eating soon." "But I'm thirsty! The food isn't done yet!" Her mother didn't respond, but she took the cup off the counter and looked at her with narrow eyes. Nora went upstairs to her room, her brows furrowed. She collapsed on the bed, staring at the ceiling. If only the festival would come sooner. Her crush would be there; she hoped that if he heard her voice, he might ask her out. When she asked her mother if she would come to the festival, she just shrugged and said nothing. She touched her nose. The hook , as most kids called her. She constantly asked her mother for a way to make it look better using makeup. Her response was always, "Nothing could hide your big nose. Just accept it." "Come down, N...

Alison remembers a school exercise set while the PE teacher was playing substitute in her sixth-grade Composition class. Image generated with OpenAI At first bell, the door at the end of the hall swings open and I am swept in a crush of other middle-schoolers into sixth-grade Composition class. Room 11 is half the size of a normal classroom, like a stage magician's lovely assistant climbed into a box and was sawn in two, leaving us with the bottom. Presto change-o. I imagine the top half someplace else with the assistant smiling and waving at the audience. Elementary school has been disappeared and Language Arts divided into Literature and Composition. I greet the teacher and slip between rows of narrow half-desks bolted to plastic chairs just big enough to hold a sixth-grader and her black-and-white composition book. He looks up as I pass. "Good morning, Alison." I slide into my seat in the back just before second bell. We are twenty-four magician's rabbits back in ...

Susan and Don go on a double date with old friends who seem to be the perfect couple. Image generated with OpenAI The sun was setting behind the towering buildings as the street lights flickered on. Don and Susan sat in their small rented coupe, one of many cars lined up bumper to bumper in rush hour traffic. Don's eyes were fixated on the red lights in front of him as Susan glared down at her phone. They flew into the city the night before. Don had a conference to attend the next day, and Susan, having never been, wanted to come along to do some sight-seeing. Although Don was originally excited for the few days to spend by himself in a new city, he didn't want to come up with some excuse as to why she shouldn't come. In the days leading up to the trip, Susan posed the idea about reaching out to old friends of theirs, Ted and Minnie, who had moved to the city years ago. Neither of them had been in contact for some time, and Don agreed that it would be good for them to recon...

Medocea has decimated Kiri's tribe, but Kiri survives and dives deeper than anyone before into the watery caves to in an effort to find and kill the creature. Image generated with OpenAI Peace. She spoke without her voice, directly into my mind, indifferent to our cries. She made the stones grow within me. I felt I would rip open; it had happened too fast, and my skin stretched too tight, though I felt nothing, no pain. I couldn't move my head and neck. The only sensation was of the stones wriggling inside me; I could feel their dispositions as if they were my own, a whirlwind of feelings, the stones with minds I could sense. I was sick; if I were like the ones who went before me, I was dying. "You must feel guilt for what you do. You are a woman, are you not?" The bald creature walked over to me naked. They were always nude, as we all were now, indecent under our luxurious white sleeping skins. Never had I been so clean, never had I seen such white. She lowered her ...