Hold On
by mindbottling

Comment:
They came without warning. From the trees, from the ground, from all the recesses and holes in the earth unguarded and unnoticed, they came.

Diminutive, but no less evil for it, they attacked en masse. Clinging to the legs of unsuspecting passerby, tripping them up and sending them to a horrible and undeserved fate.

They came without warning, and before the peoples of earth could mount a defense, they obliterated us.

They were the Cavern Children, and their time had come.

A z u r e
by njsabs

Comment:
And in the darkest of night, where memory has the ability to touch and break your heart, she floats up out of the ether, out from where I thought I had buried the pain and the loss, out from the furthest reaches of my subconcious, to remind me of what we once had.

Our darling, our joy, our taste of the wind and the sea. Her gaze like the gift to us that she was, penetrating our souls. Kindness and laughter and love. Taken from us far too early, but never forgotten.

For in the darkest of night, where memory aches my very foundation, she returns to me. Does she visit my wife as well, on these nocturnal visits? I do not have the strength to ask, but when she comes, I reach out for her, to hold her one last time, to kiss her forehead and tell her that I love her, and that she'll always be with me in my heart.

She lie there so tenderly. Fashioned so slenderly.

Lift her with care, so young and so fair.

ElectriCity
by Brent_S

Comment:
The City slept peacefully for most of that night, before the lightning came. It was like any other storm, in the beginning. The clouds rolling in off the waters, the atmospheric changes that signaled, deep in the human conciousness, that there would probably be rain. Not that the people in this city were strangers to rain by any means, but there was something different about it that night.

The first flashes of electricity arched through the skies about 2am, in the darkest of the night, when the city was finally settling down and most were at home, snug in their beds, dreaming of new days and the morning light, and the hopes and fears and joys and sadnesses that occupy all of our minds. It arched through the skies, in tiny bursts at first. Then larger and larger, with thunder building to deeper and deeper crescendos, and then it began to come out of the clouds, and it touched down on all the lighting rods on every building. Then, without explanation, it began to bypass such flimsy safety devices and began hitting the walls and windows and the very ground itself. Wherever it touched, little pulses of light exploded outward, and windows shattered and concrete burst outward in a shower of deadly shrapnel, and the very air seemed to burn.

For two full hours the lightning came down, and when it ended, the clouds remained, and the rain poured down, and the silence... the silence was deafening.

And in every little pocket of destruction, the thousands upon thousands that littered the now devastated city, there was movement. An unfurling of mass and ichor and limbs and an utterly alien life, and in every one, like a switch being flicked on somewhere, blinked two glowing points of an unearthly red glow to life.

It wasn't long, after that, that the screams began, and the city was torn apart.

The Florida Manatee
by Marc923

Comment:
I call shenanigans.

Lord... what'd I do with my glasses?
by WalesP

Comment:
Alright, I'm looking. And looking.
Still looking.

Nope, I simply am not seeing any glasses or eyewear here. Even if I give you a benefit of the doubt for contact lenses, I'm just not convinced enough.

I can't really say why you'd chose to go this route, could be any number of reasons, but because of the complete lack of eyewear, this is one of those technically sound photographs that is a very nice portraiture to boot that earns a very unapologetic 1 from me.

Ta Da!!!!!
by BeckyT

Comment:
Harry Hopper always was a show-off, but the last laugh was on him when he spent his last years in an electric hopper-chair when his moulting detached prematurely and he plunged 400 inches to the unforgiving ground below.

Spring
by BarbB

Comment:
At the end of their hope when despair came to call, they turned to her in a desperate plea for help. They turned to her even after they had shunned her. They turned to her even after they had turned her away because of the powers she had. Because of the gifts. They turned to her because there was nothing more they could do, and lives were at stake and their very existence was in the balance.

Yet even after all they had done, all they had said to her, for every horrible deed that was their shame that had been visited upon her simply because she was different, did she turn from them herself, then?

Not her. They came to her, and she smiled and bowed her head, and agreed to help them, for that was her very nature. Indeed, it was part of her very gifts, and powered them and let her do what she needed to do. So it was thus that she went out, in a ceremonial white, and began to dance. A dance of offering, of giving. A dance of asking and honor and hope. A dance for the giving of life in the form of the rains that they so desperately needed.

For days she danced, and as she did the skies grew dark and the clouds swirled over-head. As she did the droplets came, and built into the torrents that fed the soil and healed the dry and cracking lands. Through it all she danced. For days, while the earth soaked it all, and the grasses began to grow, and the rivers began to run once more.

Then, as quickly as it had began, she slowly spun to a stop, and the clouds parted, and the sun began to shine, and she, in her gossamer gown that remained as dry as it had when she began, spread her arms and walked off into that very sun as it set upon the horizon, and they never saw her again.

"I know it's here... somewhere..."
by halopes

Comment:
Oh it was a glorious day. He had just learned about his promotion, with a substantial raise. His wife had just announced that they were going to have their first child. He had stopped to check his lottery ticket and had almost had a heart-attack to learn he had just won over ten thousand dollars on it! OH, oh yes, this was a glorious day.

Laughing and smiling to himself as he walked along in contentment and joy, he turned the corner and just about ran full on into them, so distracted by his own good fortune as he was.

However, he noticed them before he did run into them, and the sight stopped him dead in his tracks. He stood and stared, the donair he'd been eating dropping out of his hands to splatter on the pavement. He stared in shock and horror.

In front of him, making a noise like a million rattling chains, were the bikes. Bikes that stood on their two tires without the help of a single human soul. Bikes that quivered and jerked as if they were just looking for an excuse to explode forward.

Turns out, he was that excuse. With a scream as the mass of bicycles shot forward, he turned and began to flee. He had no chance. They ran him down in the space of a half a block, and their tires went red.

It had begun.

May I have this dance?
by shanksware

Comment:
"Come on, I'm telling you, I really have one, it's awesome! You can come over, and turn it on and play with it, and it's really exciting and there are so many different games we can play with it and everyone will be so jealous! Please? Please come play with it?!"

"Jason, for the last time, I am not coming over to play with your Wii!"

Petronas Towers
by signal2noise

Comment:
It was an ongoing and seemingly never-ending war. Two interstellar civilizations, battling for reasons lost to time itself. Countless battles, countless loss of lives, countless invasions and surrenders and revolutions and destruction and devastation.

It might have continued into eternity, as well, had not one of the peoples developed it. That massive thing. A super-weapon to end all super-weapons. It was built in secrecy, and when it was finally complete, was unmasked to the awe and fear of all. Then on what they were calling EndDay, the massive thing lit up, charged up with energy untold, and released a beam of star obliterating power like nothing seen before, and though that beam shot through the universe and destroyed everything in its path and struck their enemies with the wrath of a million gods, it was not a victory.

For as it fired, the machine, the weapon, the end of all things, came apart in an explosive shockwave that wiped out the planet and people that had built it to be their savior, and the two warring peoples were no more.

It was self-prophetic, and truly was the EndDay.