It all started innocently enough, wandering through Macy’s, looking at dresses that were far too expensive and sophisticated for us to even consider."You should try it on, Luce," she urged me, stopping in front of a cocktail dress that a 16-year-old girl had no right to own. "You’d look stunning in it."She was right in a way. It was something a movie star would wear, glittering red upon the mannequin, leaving its shoulder...

And so, I had finally discovered the truth about Alice’s dreams. Neither of us wished to talk about what had happened, and yet how could we not? Eventually, haltingly, she told me that sometimes they weren’t as bad, that sometimes just the man in the hat was present and that often times he was sweet and others he was cruel and that as she got older, they’d gotten worse. Sometimes she found ways not to go to sleep, hoping...

I Hadda Dream I hadda dream, baby girl, you an me, in the park. You had on the prettiest pink dress and ribbons in your hair. I was pushing you on the swing, and you was laughing, your feet just about to touch the clouds, the sun like a big ball of light up in the sky. Afterwards, we sat under a big old oak tree and had pb&j sammiches and Oreos and a big thermos of ice cold lemonade. Yeah, that was a good day, baby girl."...

I must have passed out again. Either that, or what followed was too horrible to remember, which is my guess, seeing as my last memory is of a trio of the little fucks chasing after me waving cat fetuses impaled on tent stakes and turning the landscape into a bloody Jackson Pollack painting. I was sure that the little bastards had been smoking viagra laced crack and were going to violate me and then cut me open like a scie...

I awoke with my heart beating like a trapped dove, holding onto her as she shook and cried, sleep still claiming her. I could feel her own heart pounding as she began to thrash in my embrace, crying out so loudly that I was afraid she’d wake my father. Unsure of what to do, I tried shaking her awake and then, remembering a scene from a movie, slapping her cheeks until finally her eyes snapped open.Her breath was uneven an...

Chastity gently pulled back on the reins, halting Stormcloud’s progress, a bewildered look upon her face. She could have sworn she’d passed through this meadow earlier. Unrolling her map, she studied it carefully, making note of the location of the river that passed through the Faerie Kingdom. According to Glint & Barnes, there should have been a bridge here and yet, obviously there was none. The pathway simply led to the...

Funny thing. After all these years after revealing my secrets to Alice, I had forgotten one of hers, the very first one. Oh, I suppose it’s only natural. After all, we’d never spoken of it again, never even mentioned it. And yet, had I been a better friend, I would have recalled her whispered admission to me. "Sometimes, I think they might be real outside of my dreams."One thing that neither of us had considered was that...

The end came quickly. In looking back, the signs are obvious to my adult self. Not to the 16 year old teenager that I had become. Junior year. So many possibilities were flowering open. I’d discovered boys, at least in theory, the year before. Alice had been kissed for the first time but I was slow to follow her example. Of course she’d taken on the role of cheerleader while I was more at home with the fringe groups. Band...

An introduction to the reader. This is something I have been working on for a while. It was actually written quite quickly (in the space of 30 days) and then put aside to be polished, a process that has gone much more slowly. I think it needed a home before I was ready to finish it, and this site feels like that home. Funny, but a week ago, before I knew of the existence of Stories Space I had a sudden urge to finish this...

 Beside us raced the hurricane. 140 mph of sheer twisted speed, barely able to keep up with the rented Corvette we’d picked up in Toledo, let alone my amphetamine fueled brain. Under the dashboard was enough acid and ecstasy to turn an entire nation of jihad spouting Islamists into black-eyed love monkeys. Wrapped up in tinfoil and enough duct tape to open our own OSH to keep those drug sniffing bastard Nazis commonly kno...