dreamszilla

Candy shop worker Mindy buys a gun to kill her bullying coworker. Image generated with OpenAI Yes, I bought a gun to kill my coworker, Shelby. I squirmed my way through the doorway, trapped in a fight for my life. I was Ellen Ripley crawling through the vents with a flamethrower. I'm positive those vents in Alien smelled better than my cousin's house. Grandma rolled in her grave when Mac moved in. I stomped on a paper bag full of burger wrappers and empty fast food cups. Piles of McDonald's bags and empty drums of Muscle Milk filled the foyer, along with dollar flipflops from Walmart. A wall of feetstink between me and the living room. I pinched my nose as the feetstink became weedstank. The walls were stained by the latter, but totally marinated in the former. Fuck if I was gonna take my shoes off and catch athlete's herpes from the sweaty, saturated carpet. I entered the wide archway which opened up into a big living room. Mac came slinking out of his b...

18-year-old Noelle is stuck in small-town Georgia caring for her little sister and their depressed mother, when she finds out her best friend Jenny is leaving for Miami. Image generated with OpenAI It was the last day of my senior year of high school, and the first day of sticky summer vacation. Sticky is a word I use for the small-town Georgia air and my little sister's fingers. On the bus ride home, I sat next to my best friend Jenny, smelling everyone's sweat and hearing them talk about their plans. Summer camp, family beach trips, summer jobs. "What are you so quiet for?" asked Jenny. Jenny was five foot nine and skinny with blonde, boxed dyed hair, and she always smelled like her too-sweet vanilla cake body spray. She looked like a girl in a teen magazine being used to sell self-tan, apart from her two front teeth that were pushed outward in opposite directions. We shared our hatred for school. We never did well on tests, reading and writing had n...

Marin is smart and pretty and full of dreams and grows up believing that love isn't love unless it hurts. Image generated with OpenAI When Marin was in the third grade, she was sent to the school counselor's office for testing. You are special they told her and the next year she skipped fourth grade and went straight to fifth. Marin's hair was thick and long and the color of honey tinted with strawberries. At recess, a boy named Derek Carson put two wasps in her ponytail and Marin screamed and screamed and everyone laughed and pointed at her until the wasps struggled free from the jail of Marin's curls and stung the back of her neck, which burned like a fire lighting on her skin. Marin was allergic and her face and throat swelled and her breaths became wheezy and shallow. She didn't remember much until she woke up at the hospital and she told her mother she didn't want to go back to school but her mother said she had to go back and then her mother s...

A married couple are eager to start a family, but what will it take? Image generated with OpenAI There's a new billboard up on the Turnpike. "Your Mommy Makeover Awaits!" it announces. "Liposuction, Tummy Tuck. 888.888NJPS newjerseyplasticsurgery.com." On it is a very blonde and athletic-looking woman in a white bikini, winter scarf, and one of those furry hats with the ear flaps. They're called Ushankas, apparently - I look it up when I get stuck in traffic. Derived from the Russian word ushi , which means ears. It's a strange combination, the bathing suit and the winter wear, but I guess that's how these ads get your attention. I'm driving home from my job at the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is on. The contestant's doing pretty well, three for three so far. I look up and this woman in her Ushanka is giving me eyes. She looks pretty good, if I'm being honest, and I start thinking abou...

Emma is willingly trapped in an abusive relationship with a Cornish fisherman. Image generated with OpenAI Silence told of a windless morning. No foaming 'white horses' where the waves met the shoreline, meaning he had to get dressed and get out there to work. He shut the window. The warmth of the house made him shiver. It was half past four, still the dead of night. "You've passed the candle test, then?" said Emma from the bed. Tradition was that if the wind could extinguish a flame, then conditions at sea were too precarious. No candles were involved. "Aren't you getting up?" He grabbed her by the ankle under the duvet. "Egg mayo again?" She was bothered by him and reached for her phone, propping herself upright. "That'll do." He clambered into the cargo pants he'd worn the day before, pulling them over his thermal long johns. "You're still drunk, Andre." "Aye," he said, st...