It was difficult to explain to them how the diagnosis of certain death had actually given him life.

While everyone around him was in tears and upset, he actually felt more at ease. The doctor said it
would be less than a year. That gave him a year to live, something he'd failed to do with his daily
drudgery of a routine that had passed as life until then.

A long black shadow slid across the pavement near their feet and the five Venusians, very much
startled, looked overhead. They were barely in time to see the huge gray form of the carnivore
before it vanished behind a sign atop a nearby building which bore the mystifying information
"Pepsi-Cola."

The spot was perfect for camouflage. At least that's what she thought when she picked the spot. She
couldn't imagine that anyone would ever be able to see her in these surroundings. So there she sat,
confident that she was hidden from the world and safe from danger. Unfortunately, she had not
anticipated that others may be looking upon her from other angles, and now they were stealthily
descending toward her hiding spot.

The leather jacked showed the scars of being his favorite for years. It wore those scars with pride,
feeling that they enhanced his presence rather than diminishing it. The scars gave it character and
had not overwhelmed to the point that it had become ratty. The jacket was in its prime and it knew
it.

There wasn't a bird in the sky, but that was not what caught her attention. It was the clouds. The
deep green that isn't the color of clouds, but came with these. She knew what was coming and she
hoped she was prepared.

The red glint of paint sparkled under the sun. He had dreamed of owning this car since he was ten,
and that dream had become a reality less than a year ago. It was his baby and he spent hours caring
for it, pampering it, and fondling over it. She knew this all too well, and that's exactly why she had
taken a sludge hammer to it.

He sat staring at the person in the train stopped at the station going in the opposite direction. She
sat staring ahead, never noticing that she was being watched. Both trains began to move and he
knew that in another timeline or in another universe, they had been happy together.

She nervously peered over the edge. She understood in her mind that the view was supposed to be
beautiful, but all she felt was fear. There had always been something about heights that disturbed
her, and now she could feel the full force of this unease. She reluctantly crept a little closer with the
encouragement of her friends as the fear continued to build. She couldn't help but feel that
something horrible was about to happen.

It's not his fault. I know you're going to want to, but you can't blame him. He really has no idea how
it happened. I kept trying to come up with excuses I could say to mom that would keep her calm
when she found out what happened, but the more I tried, the more I could see none of them would
work. He was going to get her wrath and there was nothing I could say to prevent it.

The rain and wind abruptly stopped, but the sky still had the gray swirls of storms in the distance.
Dave knew this feeling all too well. The calm before the storm. He only had a limited amount of time
before all Hell broke loose, but he stopped to admire the calmness. Maybe it would be different this
time, he thought, with the knowledge deep within that it wouldn't.

She sat in the darkened room waiting. It was now a standoff. He had the power to put her in the
room, but not the power to make her repent. It wasn't fair and no matter how long she had to
endure the darkness, she wouldn't change her attitude. At three years old, Sandy's stubborn
personality had already bloomed into full view.

He watched as the young man tried to impress everyone in the room with his intelligence. There was
no doubt that he was smart. The fact that he was more intelligent than anyone else in the room
could have been easily deduced, but nobody was really paying any attention due to the fact that it
was also obvious that the young man only cared about his intelligence.

She had been an angel for coming up on 10 years and in all that time nobody had told her this was
possible. The fact that it could ever happen never even entered her mind. Yet there she stood, with
the undeniable evidence sitting on the ground before her. Angels could lose their wings.

All he could think about was how it would all end. There was still a bit of uncertainty in the equation,
but the basics were there for anyone to see. No matter how much he tried to see the positive, it
wasn't anywhere to be seen. The end was coming and it wasn't going to be pretty.

Green vines attached to the trunk of the tree had wound themselves toward the top of the canopy.
Ants used the vine as their private highway, avoiding all the creases and crags of the bark, to freely
move at top speed from top to bottom or bottom to top depending on their current chore. At least
this was the way it was supposed to be. Something had damaged the vine overnight halfway up the
tree leaving a gap in the once pristine ant highway.

He knew what he was supposed to do. That had been apparent from the beginning. That was what
made the choice so difficult. What he was supposed to do and what he would do were not the same.
This would have been fine if he were willing to face the inevitable consequences, but he wasn't.

They argue. While the argument seems to be different the truth is it's always the same. Yes, the
topic may be different or the circumstances, but when all said and done, it all came back to the same
thing. They both knew it, but neither has the courage or strength to address the underlying issue. So
they continue to argue.

I'm going to hire professional help tomorrow. I can't handle this anymore. She fell over the coffee
table and now there is blood in her catheter. This is much more than I ever signed up to do.

It went through such rapid contortions that the little bear was forced to change his hold on it so
many times he became confused in the darkness, and could not, for the life of him, tell whether he
held the sheep right side up, or upside down. But that point was decided for him a moment later by
the animal itself, who, with a sudden twist, jabbed its horns so hard into his lowest ribs that he gave
a grunt of anger and disgust.

She wanted rainbow hair. That's what she told the hairdresser. It should be deep rainbow colors,
too. She wasn't interested in pastel rainbow hair. She wanted it deep and vibrant so there was no
doubt that she had done this on purpose.

Colors bounced around in her head. They mixed and threaded themselves together. Even colors that
had no business being together. They were all one, yet distinctly separate at the same time. How
was she going to explain this to the others?

It was just a burger. Why couldn't she understand that? She knew he'd completely changed his life
around her eating habits, so why couldn't she give him a break this one time? She wasn't even
supposed to have found out. Yes, he had promised her and yes, he had broken that promise, but still
in his mind, all it had been was just a burger.