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The boys had signed a verbal contract with the woman who would all too quickly become their new devil. A writing workshop sounded like so much fun over drinks and mixed with idle musing about movies, but in practice it reminded them that their best friend was a didactic dictator hell bent on flexing her English-major-muscles with ever sucker punch to their latest pieces.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 05.19.2013 @ 5:37 am

Darting between the branches and out beyond the shrubbery, beak-first, the sparrow was bound for the space between break and tail lights, catching the airstream sheering off one car to propel the brave bird above the rest.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 05.18.2013 @ 2:28 am

Some said studying was a process best done beginning to end, while others practiced the religion of relegating the task to the last minute. Todd, however, took the taboo route of avoiding the effort all together and only showing up for tests. Ironically, it wasn’t until he received the test back that Todd discovered the definition of ‘taboo’ when he missed the question on the final. Taboo, adj. proscribed by society as improper or unacceptable; Taboo, n. prohibited or excluded from use or practice.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 05.13.2013 @ 9:03 pm

The end of the semester simplified the rest of her life, providing a road map’s level of clarity. Editing and publication came next; working out was a must; of course there was exploration to consider (she really needed to see more of the world); a social life, even on a small scale, was necessary to maintain sanity; and of course, there was tomorrow, she couldn’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 05.08.2013 @ 10:54 pm

Her credibility was damaged by her inability to focus. Drifting thoughts dragged words well away from the points she endeavored to make and each verbal pause pushed her frustration closer to the cliffs of cursing, which could not be climbed again once one fell from them.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 05.05.2013 @ 2:57 am

Friends become enemies the instant it’s time to critique. One’s writing, fresh-formed, is a sickly child, scarcely hatched and in need of nurturing shelter, yet they would throw stones and pluck at its frail wings, lamenting the shade of the feathers.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.30.2013 @ 1:19 am

Dead crows lined the wall and blackened the pathway towards it. There were dozens of them inking the snow, and dozens more decorating the stone. What could have killed them and more importantly what happened to their eyes?

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.29.2013 @ 2:14 am

Exhaustion held her head in an eternal checkmate, denying her the chance at another game, let alone victory in the first. She could not sleep until she worked, but she could not work until she slept.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.23.2013 @ 9:58 pm

Her mood did not match the complex Victorian color scheme of the room. Everywhere sprawled heaps of magenta and mauve brocade, intricately magmatic Persian rugs, and honeyed drapes. She sat soaked in heat, but her heart hollowed for the supernal hues of midnight heavens and ice of oceans emptied upon open eyes.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.22.2013 @ 3:41 am

Foulness foamed from his lips, lingering in lengthy splotches long after it had dried. His words were as venomous and vulgar as they were didactic and pleading. He hoped to help others change the world, but had no faith that they would move to attempt it, let alone succeed in the effort if they did.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.17.2013 @ 9:42 pm

Her mind was mumbling through the haze of consciousness that corrupted sleeping thoughts. The buzz was coming from nearby, but not quite so close as the throbbing. Was it construction? No, it was nearer still. It was then that she realized she had been awoken by the strained stuttering of her own pulse, pushing up against her pillow.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.16.2013 @ 7:41 pm

A sturdy lever, logic hefted the fallacy-filled argument up and over onto its side, spilling the truth across the crowds gathered around its bulk. Sadly, their will worked itself into denial and the points proven were disproven in turn by mass decree, rather than fact.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.15.2013 @ 11:39 pm

Anchored to her chair, the girl couldn’t help but yawn in the waves of work that washed over her screen and caught her fingers in the kelp of keys. Hopefully the storm would subside soon and she could salvage some sleep from the shores of an unmade bed.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.12.2013 @ 12:30 am

She ran through the bloody barbs, head bent against the threat on incoming fire and sweating dirt across browned features contorted by the will to live. How long had she been trapped in these trenches?

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.09.2013 @ 1:27 am

Punished by pleasures that have become her past, she seeks to save the smiles of those who are lost to the same pain that pushes her to regret every meeting made in the last few years. Was this the fate of those who loved too much and were loved too much in turn?

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.08.2013 @ 3:03 am

Her thoughts grew from the cesspools of her mind, creeping up out of the gutters, climbing through the grates and griping the ankles of all who passed, clinging and curling, pulling them back down into the depths of her mental disease.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 04.05.2013 @ 12:40 am

Her mind had been ravaged by the tornado of consciousness and creativity, and now lay a desolate wasteland of debris and dreams destroyed by sleeplessness. Somewhere, amongst the wreckage, a small shelter lay hidden beneath a fallen powerline, and within it huddled the productivity of days to come.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.28.2013 @ 8:41 am

He was destined to escape this place, destined to live on and long, destined to do great deeds. First, he just had to figure out where the door was and why he was wearing a Powerpuff Girls’ wrist watches. Also pants might help.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.26.2013 @ 7:12 pm

Instincts invaded the forefront of her mind, crossing no man’s land into the domain of paranoia, proclaiming it sovereign amongst the kingdoms of thought. Their new banner waved in her peripherals, bearing the brand of “Beware” above the barbed hairs that raised, rallying against the man shadowing the window behind her.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.21.2013 @ 5:38 pm

Eternal efforts exist only in the mind, only in the hands that struggle to forge them, only in the eyes that constantly seek them, only in the words that would work their way beyond the history books, beyond the bedrock and deep, into the core of things.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.14.2013 @ 12:05 am

She told tales of the past, of her past, and though at first they were flat facts, slowly emotional moles hill mounted and merged into vast ranges of regrets and repeated mistakes, masking the small successes that huddled at the base, in the shadows of ominous peaks.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.12.2013 @ 1:14 am

Her energy returned only in anger, which threw it in her face and left her staggered by rage, trembling at the audacity of it all. But ultimately, her mind, though whetted by indignation, was still bent towards exhaustion and the attack only pushed it further into the decay of thoughts that wished themselves dreams.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.07.2013 @ 4:25 pm

She read the tea leaves, trusted the stars, and saw the signals. All of them said the same thing: she had hurt him and in doing so, had hurt herself. Mistakes made in the moment made me misery a lasting moral.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.06.2013 @ 4:03 pm

She grazed in isolation, pruning the foliage of progress for the choicest buds, but she did not leave any shrub or briar bear, for she knew that to do so would doom her to starvation later.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.05.2013 @ 1:42 am

She knew what she was, and so did the universe. The word, the well-earned title, stalked her thoughts from the shadows, ever fearful of a direct confrontation. She was a weakling, a coward incapable of coping emotionally, coping like an adult.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.04.2013 @ 5:59 am

Every other conversation the complications came back to harry their heels, to remind them that nothing had changed, that none of the solutions they had tailored had been worn. It was beginning to instill in her a sense of purgatory, a sense of paradoxically perpetual stagnation.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.03.2013 @ 4:06 am

She conjured up a life in the cauldron of her mind, caressing it with the occasional stir of drama and a dash of disappointment to deepen its flavor. She tasted the success and found it sweet, though ultimately the concoction was far from complete, for what was a life unlived, a life fabricated and untouched by others?

Posted By L. A. Smith On 03.01.2013 @ 2:03 pm

She was sentenced to a life of hard grammar. She was forced to sleep surrounded by whispers of passive voices, awaking hours later to her first ration of commas, which doled out three times a day along with a half dozen contractions to help her through the mandated matches of formal conversation; sometimes, they even allotted her a semicolon to lengthen thoughts.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 02.28.2013 @ 3:11 pm

She heard a knocking at the door and opened it to emptiness. She heard a knocking at the window and glanced to see the nothingness of night. She heard a knocking in her chest and curled inward, listening to the flight of her heart.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 02.27.2013 @ 2:43 pm

She was no longer startled by the way grimaces gained ground on normally friendly features at the merry updates of her betrayer’s life, she was no longer disturbed by the violent twitches that whipped her agitation outward at every word the woman spoke. No, she no longer cared how callous and cold she appeared, how hidden her heart was beneath the rage.

Posted By L. A. Smith On 02.25.2013 @ 10:23 pm