M.S. Edwards's Blog, page 5

#15 – weak

Harry never understood the concept of “weak in the knees” until Jules. And then, regardless of the apocalypse and her boost and all that spontaneous evolution nonsense, he realized he had to resign himself to the fact that every time Jules opened her mouth to sing, he would just have to find a chair or a sofa or a wall to lean on so he wouldn’t fall over like a wanky fanboy.

That was during the early days, when people were still unclear about what was happening. No one was alarmed; in fact, w...

#14 – clock

Matt Cross stumbled into the darkened foyer of his flat, bleary-eyed and none too stable.  It had been the most atrocious of days, what with numerous members of the demimonde flitting in and out of the shop, demanding their fresh flowers or their imported Sicilian wines or their latest fripperies from Paris.  Bad enough their nasal whines and haughty demeanors.  Bad enough that he was woefully short-staffed, what with two of his minions away on a protracted holiday.  But the topper of it all...

#13 – guarded

Peter and Ellie were enemies first.

In retrospect, it was inevitable and expected that they’d start off this way. When one attended a prestigious college and chose an impacted, cutthroat major, one should expect nothing less.

Peter was top of the class and Ellie was always clawing her way into second, but barely, because the uni was run by a group of patriarchal buffoons who still believed that women were good for nothing except making the coffee. Black. (It was ironic that Ellie preferred dr...

#12 – whale

There are empty spaces that transcend explanation.  They defy words.  They refuse clarification, deny definition.  They lurk, unnoticed and unmolested, for what may seem like eternity.  But they are there.

There are empty spaces that itch at the edges of the subconscious. They exist in the blink of an eye, in the sidelong glance, in the caught breath, in déjà vu. They are sometimes feared, occasionally renounced.  Often, they are ignored.  But they exist.

There are empty spaces.

They long to...

#11 – cruel

The Lady marked him. It was the only explanation. And really, it had been his own damned fault; he shouldn’t have mouthed off. But there was something about her sneer and her raised eyebrows and the disdainful way she had made such a stink about the stink that had compelled him to say something cheeky in response. In retrospect, he doubted he would’ve reacted any other way, but it sure would’ve been a lot less aggravating and a lot less dangerous all told had he held his tongue.

They had boar...

#10 – flowing

Katie Cooper hates being last. She hates it when playing soccer tournaments. She hates it when working on a research paper. She hates it when taking a math test. And she definitely hates it when it describes her very existence.

Because Katie Cooper – Coop to her friends, thank you very much – is the last of the lilim, a secret coven of angelic conspirators tasked to preserve in perpetuity the matrix God used to create mortals, aka the Primo Homine. Which, unfortunately, has chosen not to re-e...

#9 – precious

There are precious few moments in a person’s life that are worth documenting, let alone memorializing for posterity. Hendrik acknowledged this even as he reaped the benefits of working for people who believed the exact opposite. He blamed this moral defect on his mother.

“Come back to bed, love,” Milo murmured, patting the overstuffed down comforter next to him.

“Almost done,” Hendrik said in a tone that implied the exact opposite.

He heard Milo’s sigh and the accusatory rustle of bedcovers a...

#8 – star

Ingrid was already a star when the first wave of spontaneous evolution swept the globe.

She’d also had an easy time of it. The being a star, that is. Where most people’s origin stories had humble beginnings, Ingrid’s was nothing short of miraculous.

She had written a ukulele piece, an awkward teen rambling on about lost love when the only loss she’d ever really experienced was the theft of her favorite mechanical pencil. Putting her angst to song then doing the obligatory upload to the variou...

#7 – exhausted

Aloysius Crow decided that he’d had enough.

He was done running. Done fighting. Done letting the fates blow him this way and that. Done being residual fallout from some higher power’s whim or fancy.

Aloysius Crow was exhausted.

And what, exactly, does one do when one is exhausted? Why, go on holiday, of course.

And it was with a perverse sense of satisfaction that Crow did just that. Go on holiday. Without so much as a by your leave. He’d even done the trope-y bit (it’s not cliché if it’s del...

#6 – drooling

Sam Harkin was a rule follower. Had been even before he was born. His mother birthed him on the exact day the doctors predicted. His father only had to tell him once that children should be seen and not heard. His teachers always held him up as the model from which all other students should follow, much to Sam’s chagrin since this resulted in a helluva lot more problems than solutions throughout his brutal tenure in the American public school system.

So when Sam woke up one cold and rainy nig...