Everyone is thrilled she is coming, and they clamber to get tickets to her show before they sell out.

The excitement builds but people start falling. First the banker’s wife, found dead with her ears cut off.

“Her EARS?”

“Oh, yes.”

On opening night, the theatre has many empty seats, yet she sings so beautifully, no one notices she can’t pack a house.

By the last night of her show the theatre is only half full, yet she shines anyway.

It helps to know that even when she can’t pack a theatre, she always has a willing ear to listen.… Read the rest

I hardly recognize him.

This isn’t the pimply, pockmarked face under greasy hair I remember from high school.

This can’t be the guy who got spitballed and wedgie’d, who was tripped in halls, who had his lunch tray dumped on his lap.

This can’t be that guy, because this guy is glowing.

I see him in the grocery store, pushing a cart with two little kids, smiling brightly like the gold band on his finger.

I go home and look in the mirror and see myself as I am, and I can’t help but wonder how he got everything first.… Read the rest

As they died with a soft smile, the only thing I could feel was triumph.

Then, the truth hit me like a bucket of cold water.

I’d forgotten to ask for the key.

I pulled at my chains, tugged at the huge lock, but couldn’t break free.

I was trapped with their bodies and the vial of poison that had rolled out of my reach.

I spent hours and bled rivers trying to reach it, that green liquid my only escape from a terrible death, but it was too far away.

I watched their bodies rot, and then I did.… Read the rest

As the dust settled, she looked around the ruined room.

The staircase had fallen and lay in a wooden heap, trapping her inside the basement.

After all of the noise and chaos she could finally breathe a sigh of relief. Now, all she had to do was wait to be rescued.

She stared up at the little window near the basement ceiling, her only source of light for the last five years.

It had taken her that long to make it, but she knew how to get things to explode.

And the man who took her lay underneath the stairs.… Read the rest

“What do you want from me? This is just the way it is! We both have jobs and can still barely afford anything. We work all the time and barely see each other. What do you want from me?”

“I miss you, I just wish you would come with us once in a while.”

“Why would I want to do errands with you on our one day off?”

“I just want to spend more time with you.”

“Well, I just want to relax.”

So she bundled up the kids in the back and left, … Read the rest