"Be careful where you tread once you're inside," she says, handing me a ball of thread. "Go now, quick. "
How many feet stepped into this labyrinth with the uncertainty of what's going to happen?
But, I step forward. And as I do, I think of her eyes--wide and imploring, urging me on to a task left unfulfilled.
The huge shadow of a man-bull appears.
"Kill him."
The thread in my hand falls. I unsheath my sword.
"I don't want to."
"Don't," she whispers. "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. It's our fate, my brother and I."
- Ariadne17, Infidelity
Before it all, we were just plain old numbers. I was twenty-two and he was seven, separated by a slash, bearing no more special meaning than a grade school arithmetic problem. Then, all of the sudden, the slash became an obelus and the next thing I knew, I was being torn apart.
“Do not despair,” Seven told me. “We’re soon to be free.”
And freedom—I found out—meant becoming one of the greatest twists in all mathematical history. Myriad. Boundless. Free. And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.
- Bertang_Badtrip, Aviary
"My son... there are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights."
The boy was about to embrace Him when he heard familiar screams. The ones who tortured him to death just to drop his faith--flashed in his eyes--drowning in the sea of fire. Tears started to crawl down to his cheeks. His soul felt intensely longing as he lose himself.
Slowly, he knelt down and begged. The yesterday's agony was nothing against his unconditional love. "My Lord, please bring me back to my parents... d-drag me to hell."
- CallMeBoss, Reminiscence
"It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that."
Those were my husband's last words.
I am now sixty-three years old. My hair is now white with streaks of gray, and my teeth, all gone. I have no one left at all.
Through the looking glass, I watched my bony fingers touch my wrinkled face.
I'd rather lose a thousand lives than this chance of tasting something temporarily pleasant.
I swallowed the pill. Drugs, they called it.
Suddenly, everything was hazy. I begin to travel to a place where dreams are brought to life, where I am not alone, and where, instead of being the person I was but did not wish to be, I become someone I've always yearned for.
My thoughts are alive.
- defininghappiness, Vulnerability
They are running, crying, pouring, bleeding - escaping the confines of my mind, memories not of my own.
They are of a child's crippling fear of angry voices filling the air, of a hero's haunting nightmares of gunshots and screams, of silent cries no one can hear.
Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.
Sometimes the stories told in my clinic follow me back home.
Sometimes I feel trapped inside their world.
I want to save them but sometimes... I think I'm the one who needs saving.
- EphemeralFirefly, Aviary
"She was enclosed inside a spherical cage, trapped and alone, like a princess waiting for her knight. He was the journeyman who navigated the long and winding paths, and dark tunnels just to get to her. He competed with millions and millions of other knights just to prove his worth.
He was the one; the journeyman who reached her and breached through her spherical cage. He reached for her hands and they both unified. And he smiled and said, 'at that moment, we were infinite'
And that my son, is how you were born in this world.."
- HaveYouSeenThisGuy_, Genesis
A smile is the biggest lie of all.
It can hide the past, conceal the tears, and cover the wounds.
It covers anything; from your stepfather who seems to care for you but will sneak to your bed and will start touching you, up to your mother who always sells you out on the street for a living.
Every night, you have your nightmares for a company, and when the sun rises up you will be forced to put a smile on your face to cover the casualties. The curves of your lips rewrite history after all.
- LadyLollyChain, Vulnerability
"There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights. But like other lights, I need to turn you off. For myself, for my own good. There’s no turning back now.”
These were his last words before he left me. It was the sweetest, yet the most painful.
And I knew from that moment he wouldn’t come back. It wasn't ours to keep after all.
Years had passed, now I'm standing in front of him. Healed by time. Smiling, as he said the word "Body of Christ."
- louieadrielle, Infidelity
One tint, another shade. One word, another thought. A single word could create, a single word could destroy. One whisper, another scream. One word, another thought. You will never know how huge an impact your little words could have.
And yet, for a writer, he speaks not through the tip of his tongue but the tip of his pen. He speaks, and yet he says nothing. The lips of his pen spill a thousand words nobody else could express.
One idea, another change.
The curves of your lips rewrite history... And the curves create a straight path to the future.
- superjelly, Empowerment
One of these eight authors will be joining our three finalists to battle it out in the Finale. And if you ever feel down about being the last to get in, just remember that EGStryker, last season's champion, was the last to get in and also an LCP passer.
Good luck, authors!
