Addiction

If I were a different kind of writer, I’d have something nasty to say about my cigarette fixation.

As it is, though, I still have to say – a cigarette is slight, slim, and irritating. Makes it hard for me to breathe, but is comforting. Without realizing it, I reach for it once more. Without appreciating it when it’s there, I find myself missing it when it’s gone. And a smoky, long, thin tube, an instrument of death. The cigarette is a constant reminder of the past. Yet I’m addicted.

I never should have started in the first place, quite frankly. I know that. I know it with every brewath that feels labored, with every time I catch myself sputtering like a child. This habit is ruining me little by little.

Why do I surround myself with things that could destroy me? Why do I keep being caught up in such sure danger?

Because, I suppose, I’m a novelist. It’s romantic.

I can’t help myself. I fall in love.

Darien’s View

A Crystal Clear Destiny.

That’s what they called it. From that moment in the Starlight Tower, a moment in a year that never happened, I remembered another lifetime and a love– but only for a moment. Then it was all gone again. How can you call that a love story? I may not be Romeo, but it sure doesn’t feel like one to me. I know a better story, though. One that doesn’t depend on fate, and one that happened right here and now.

Everyone knows that I was destined to be with a princess named Serenity. But this is the story of how I fell in love with a girl named Serena.

A Little Movie Magic

Matt does see the invitation on his way out, but he doesn’t read it. He has no way of knowing, no warning. No idea that after tonight nothing will be the same.

Nathan Petrelli’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day

(With apologies to Judith Viorst)

There are many pleasant things to which one can wake in the morning. Birdsong. The voice of a loved one. Sunlight. The smell of pancakes wafting up from below.

Angela Petrelli’s face is not one of those things.

Fathers’ Day

Matt woke up alone and aching. For a moment he didn’t recognize his surroundings. Everything was so dark, so deathly quiet. For a moment, he was afraid he’d dreamed it all, that the sweet, gentle salvation of the past six months had melted away with the dawn and he was back shivering on concrete, punctured and perishing. No doctor there to plug the wounds, to look at him like he mattered. No child whispering words of sincere hope in his ear. It had all been an illusion.

Something Invulnerable

Even for Odessa, this summer is hot. The sun rolls across the sky with big spiny ragged arms and burns everything in sight. Shadows are deep and inviting pools of coolness that disappear as you get close, like mirages in the desert. Everything lies half-dead, scorched, flat.

It’s the summer before Claire starts high school. Public high school, it’s been decided, although her dad fought mightily against the idea. She’s not sure why. Lyle goes to public school. She knows she’s Daddy’s favorite, but she doesn’t quite get why she gets coddled, why she’s so special. But Mom won the fight, and that means Claire will enter the real world come September.