Accepting Death, And What Comes With It Annabel accepted the fact she was going to die at 2.37 pm on a quiet, nondescript Sunday afternoon. The only real worry was how her husband would afford the funeral, but that didn't particularly matter, especially as there would only be one mouth to buy food for. Was she scared? Annabel eyed the oncoming ground, as she sped past the hotel windows. If she'd looked upwards, she would have seen the shocked face of her sister, gaping like a fish choking on something unpleasant, but she didn't look up. Weren't you supposed to see your #life flash before your eyes? She mused on this for a moment, but her #life hadn't amounted to much anyway, only a neat list of checked boxes. Closing her eyes and bracing for impact, Annabel took a deep breath in. And then proceeded to not hit the pavement. She opened one eye carefully, then the other. There was no splattered body, no blood dripping across the pavement, just her, suspended about ten meters in the air. She glanced down, wondering if it was some sort of out of body experience, but there was nothing. Annabel waved an arm tentatively, and she floated gently in that direction. So it wasn't just hovering, but flying. She poked the huge concrete structure she'd fallen from, and it was very much real. Another arm flap, and she was propelled upwards. She did a neat breaststroke pull with her arms, mirroring the action with her legs, and was only mildly surprised when she shot upwards. With measured, careful strokes Annabel made her way up to the hotel window she'd fallen from. Her sister was still there, mouth unhinged like an asylum escapee, and made no protest as Annabel pushed her out the way, wriggling in through the window. Dusting off her low heeled patent leather shoes, Annabel frowned at a ladder in her tights, and turned to her trembling sister. "I really do hope I'm not a ghost, because that would be quite inconvenient."

An Innocent Little Funeral James doesn't know made him go into the church, a small grey stone one with a gently twirling weathervane. It's just he's been running for a long time through thick forests now, and it seemed like a good place to rest. The first thing he sees is the black coffin, the highly polished wood glimmering slightly in the dark interior of the church. He almost laughs when he realizes he's run from a wedding to a funeral, but stops when he remembers that that's exactly what it is, a funeral. The second thing he notices is the remarkable lack of people. There's the vicar, droning softly on, and that appears to be it. James wanders over to the coffin, receiving a quick glance from the vicar, but nothing more. He gasps when he sees the girl encased in the velvet interior of the coffin. She is perfectly, divinely beautiful. He couldn't describe exactly her beauty, for it shifted oddly, the longer he looked at her. A strange urge ran through his body, to reach out and touch this girl. But it was a funeral, she was the corpse, that was wrong. Still... It couldn't hurt. James reached out a soft hand, and caressed her face. Suddenly, there was something burning, something horribly painful wracking his body, like liquid fire rushing through his veins. His screams were heard a mile away, where a wedding party was waiting for the groom.

Serpent He slithers across the floor His hunched form full of false humbleness. Dark, dingy, a mossy green Intercepted by a jewel-like flick, A speck of colour, In an overbearing land of monotone. The lizard with no legs, He creeps, softly, maliciously, Death dripping from his lips. The shadowy predator. Eyes glistening in the night, He waits, he watches. Silent and still, His scales ripple, silky smooth, As he hunts the harvest mouse. A green ninja, with curved razors, and His mouth snaps open, coiling and twisting, Enclosing that tasty morsel.

The Sea The sea is a feline huntress, Arching her back against tumbling waves. She pads along raw coastline, Hissing and spitting at crumbling rocks. Claws extended, she leaps, Her unwary prey swallowed in crashing tides. Her eyes change with moods like shifting winds, Unstable, wild, flickering back and forth, Bearing acquaintance to roughly hewn granite, Then rivets of lapis lazuli, And clear as uncut diamonds. Brushing past sandy floors, Her sleek fur ripples gently, Creating soft currents. She sleeps, no longer hunting. The sea sleeps

Cycles Of War It was war. Every day, they would sit in cold metal capsules, cramped in like mice in a cage. At their specified time, the door would unlock, and it would be their turn to fight. Everyday, it was somewhere different, sometimes a forest where the mud squelched up into their boots, sometimes a snowy tundra where their fingers froze to their guns. They would charge at the enemy, sometimes the hunter, sometimes the hunted. The sharp smell of blood lingered on their clothes, their hands. Sometimes it was other people's. Most of the time it was their own. Obviously, they were right in doing this. They were fighting against sick, mutated creatures that couldn't even be called human anymore. When their throat was ripped out by cold, animalistic fangs, and they lay there dying on the battlefield, in puddles that stank of rotten flesh, or drowning in icy water that clawed at them with a cold that chilled them to their very soul, they knew they were right. And couldn't the others see, they weren't just fighting blindly but being a savior! They wasn't true though. No-one would remember their name, no-one would know they were anything but a barcode, a number, a plastic block on a map used to light a fire as the last ones desperately clung to #life. At the end, it was children fighting. They didn't know why, they were just sent with guns bigger than their own skeletal frames. Of course they list, of course they did, when the last soldier was a ten year old crying as he clung to the inside of his pod, not wanting to face whatever was outside. Even he died, as four of them crushed the pod with just bare, filthy hands. But it was war, and when it came down to it, no-one blamed the creatures for doing what they did. They could rebuild the earth, free of the humans who would send children into battle, god-forsaken children, and expect to get away with it. They conveniently forgot what they had done wrong. The creatures did well. They wiped out all trace of humankind, and it was forbidden to inform the next generation that humans had existed. Earth would be better, happier, cleaner, purer. Until one day, they thought they could be better. They didn't know what had happened with humans, hundreds of years had passed. In a lab, a formula ran through a test subject's veins, the fiery chemicals gripping his heart. Eyes, once a docile purple, glowed orange. It began to hiss, to crackle. "This world can be better. Better without you."