dreamszilla

Fitness instructor Kendra Wakefield wakes up to find an impossible note on her iPhone, warning her not to look under her bed; by Chere Taylor. Don't look under the bed . Kendra Wakefield stared at the glowing message from her iPhone in the comfort of her flower themed bathroom. Every morning, she inspected her gold and black braids for frizz, then did her stretching exercises, and finally caught up on her emails with her phone. Kendra liked to perform all these actions before starting another glorious day as the Sweat or Regret's fitness instructor and owner. But this morning she was greeted with that strange message, coming from her Notes app of all places. How odd. It's Jeremiah, she thought. He snuck in here last night wanting to apologize by leaving me a gift under my bed. Kendra squealed with delight and ran into the adjoining bedroom. She scrambled across the pink and purple comforter to poke her head underneath the bed frame. Then the impossibility hit ...

Daphne holidays on a Greek island to try and escape her worries, but she cannot escape her own body; by Birgit Lennertz Sarrimanolis. Image generated with OpenAI For the past few days, rain clouds scudded and hung low and dark on the mountain, sheathing its peak in gray fog. The three monasteries - Agios Sotiris, Agios Barbara, and Agios Prodromos - were just barely visible from the small port town at the base of the mountain, tiny specks on a looming mountain façade. When Daphne first arrived she questioned her timing for a holiday on a Greek island. There was little promise of the warm spring temperatures she had anticipated. She had jumped at the chance, though, when her friend Pavlo, who owned a small hotel in the port town, invited her to stay for a week. Winter had clung on too long. Leaving Athens, a sea of concrete and blaring horns and humanity, seemed like the right thing to do. " Protomaiou is a magical time on the island," Pavlo told her. "On t...

My daughter invited me to spend the weekend at a family cabin on the Chesapeake Bay for my birthday this year. It was so quiet. The only sounds were our voices, birds chatting, water splashing against the bank, and wind scattering the beautiful, colorful fall leaves on the ground like puzzle pieces. Exactly what I needed after suffering from a concussion at the beginning of the summer. The unfortunate accident happened when I was working in our garden. I was bending over, pulling some weeds. My grandson called my name, and as I started to stand, the double iron shepherd’s hook started to fall. We met in the middle. I had no idea how much it hurt to be hit in the head with such a heavy piece of metal. At first, I thought it was just a bump on my head, but symptoms like a severe headache, neck pain, nausea, and dizziness didn’t ease up, so I went to the doctor. A CT scan cleared me of a subdural hematoma (bleeding in the brain). However, the inflammation from the brain injury has c...

Erin goes to great lengths to entertain her lover's boss; by Bill Tope. Image generated with OpenAI With her face screwed up and her eyes moist, the pretty blonde broke into heartfelt sobs and was soon weeping with abandon. Sophie edged her way into the bedroom and asked, "Erin, are you going to be alright?" Erin drew a staggered breath and nodded her head. "I'll be okay." Without reacting further to the outburst, Sophie quitted the room and went about her business. Which was par for the course, thought Erin. Sophie always had bigger fish to fry. As much as Erin loved her, she knew that Sophie, five years younger than she, was, above all else, ambitious. Erin tossed her drenched tissue into the waste basket, wiped her face with the heel of her hand, and walked from the room. Sophie was in the kitchen, fiddling fecklessly with one of Erin's cookbooks. "Isn't it about time you started dinner?" asked Sophie. "Mike will...

Natalia Liron's character listens to her grandmother Anya's story of clashing with Nazis in the Belarusian swamp during WWII. The library cards smelled of dust, old ink, and something else irredeemably old, probably time itself. Next to the cards lay a small old doll, worn-out by hands, which was carved out of wood by someone a long time ago. I was staring at my grandma - her arthritic fingers trembled slightly as she gently stroked those cards, all rough to the touch from use. She was anxious today because yesterday she received a notice that a registered letter in her name had arrived at the post office. I knew she had stopped by there on her way to the store. And now, having returned, she said nothing about the letter and simply sat down to look at the old library cards, covered with her large, sprawling handwriting. They were left over from her work in the library; they had long been lying forgotten in a box on top of the closet. I was sitting next to her and was...