Brooke Duran

I don't have any stories this week, but I recently started an art class. Today we worked on a drawing of a mythical kitten dragon (what that is if you can't tell). We were told that it is okay no matter what it ends up looking like in the end. Anything requires imagination and artists admire that!

It is safe for me to say, or rather admit to you that it has indeed been an awfully busy week, as far as my own personal free-writing time goes. You may remember my recent book publication of "Kiss me at Midnight" that retells the classic tale of Cinderella (what if she didn't even want to attend the ball?). That book I had great potential plans for being part of a book series of re-written fairy tales. That potential was hanging for some time. Admittedly, I did try to get a retelling of Sleeping Beauty and/or Rapunzel started in my free time, but all those ideas seemed empty. (Weren't they destined to marry the princes that they ended up marrying their whole life? I don't like that. I prefer fate playing a role in my stories.) That was when it struck me, rather I have my son, Nate to thank for helping me come up with an idea that I have no doubts will grow. He was wearing his blue sailor onesie that says "first mate" on it when I was looking at him the ...

Zion Jones is a police interrogator in Miami’s overburdened police department. He’s up to his eyeballs in paperwork and really doesn’t have time for another case, but when his best friend and fellow cop is shot in a burglary-gone-wrong, he’s willing to take on a few extra cases. The next interrogation was supposed to be routine: a murder, a suspect, a suspicious amount of transferred cash. But the moment he gets in the room, he knows something is wrong. This suspect isn’t scared. This suspect is laughing, and proceeds to tell Zion personal, too-intimate-to-be-hearsay details on cold case murders going back nearly a hundred years. It gets weirder: for reasons unknown, the digital recording came up blank, as if no conversation had taken place. Of course, everything Zion has to report is dismissed—it’s nonsense, nothing that can be proven, and it was just an attempt to mess with his head. Right? If that’s so, then why does Zion feel like someone’s watching him everywhere he goes, as if ju...

Sunlight found its way into the room, making up a white frame around the short dark curtain that only just shaded the window. The glow cascading around the shaded window reminded him of Morita’s black square. He breathed. Ali would have giggled mercilessly at this comical thought. He sat on the edge of the bed, perturbed about his plans. The box was in the living room, and he craved to go, to open it, and have a magic familiarity. He said he would cover all the mirrors in the house. He did not want this to be an instant to face bleak reality, but a time to run out of it. Should he change his wardrobe? He had pardoned himself from work today and had put on his relaxation wardrobe out of common custom. But was this suitable? Maybe. After all, most of their time as one had taken place on weekends and holidays, as if it were something to celebrate. He began his job by covering each mirror with painstaking maintenance. When he was finished, he brushed the settee Ali had loved to sit on. He ...

Hey, my name is Bradley Steven Humperdink, I am sort of the prince charming character of this story without being a prince. Weird, right? I was born and raised in the middle of a broken land, a divided kingdom. My job was to be a cook at the bakery, even though I was horrible at baking foods. In school I had to study biographies of princesses like Cinderella and Snow White. When I was in the middle of my studies, I noticed something, the climax was always at midnight. Then a quick question came across my mind, “Why does it always have to be midnight?” but then, I graduated from school, got a job, so I forgot that when I was in school, I asked the simple question, As I grew older, I became the hero of everything, and it was just because I was quarterback of the football team. I was also a girl magnet, so I had a girlfriend. Her name was Cindy Samantha Jensen. She was way too clingy to me. She was with me all the time! She also talked to me about marriage all the time as if she wanted...

SeeCeeSea the CrazySafeway By: Virginia Allen It is going to happen anytime now. Any second. Is my clock right? Why hasn’t it occurred yet? Sure, waiting for it isn’t the same as the anticipation of waiting for a football game’s buzzer to go off, crinkling your nose in the chilly, but heated air, and the other team has the ball, the score is close, and the timer is taking forever. Last year, the team had a great defense, but this year, you aren’t so sure. One more second…no, two more seconds. Brrrring!!!! (What do you know? I guess is kind of, sort of similar!) The plain red and brown environment of the Northern Windsor Regional High School becomes an eruption of color and noise in a split second. Teenager. Am I right? Now take a deep inhale through your nose, I invite you, if you dare. I’m getting sweat, attempted disguises, a lot of attempted disguises, along with a lot of sweat (some with good reason, others just nerves finding an interesting wat to show themselves). See those tw...

On the third day of continuous rain, they had killed so many feisty crabs inside the house that Ezra had to cross his sopping courtyard and throw them back into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it might be due to the stench. It had been a sad world since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single hue of ash-gray and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a horribly common stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Ezra was coming back to the house following throwing the crabs an uncertain distance, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the back of the courtyard. He had to go awfully close to see that it was an old man, a horribly old man, lying with his face in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his large wings. Frightened by that nightmare brought to life, Ezra ran to get Scarlett, his wife...