It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I started admiring writers as inspirations for my own work, and my earliest influences there were Stephen King, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Richard Adams.
One life per year. It seemed so moderate a price... until you looked back and realized you could fill a movie theater with your victims.
I could point out that we have a compass, but Anders isn’t just directionally challenged – put a compass in his hand, and it starts spinning, as if his very physiology foils him.
Suburbia: a place where they cut down trees and name streets in their memory.
There’s one you don’t see in the movies. Nothing says ‘I love you’ like ‘I tracked down this guy for you to kill.
Could Ashyn do the same in the same situation? Likely not. Heroes made the bold moves. Heroes risked their lives. Others kept the troops at ease, tended the wounded, fed the hungry, and soldiered on, and the world could not survive without them any more than it could without heroes.
Jeremy shifted to the left, blocking my view of Clay, as if we were Siamese fighting fish that wouldn’t attack if we couldn’t see each other. “Come.
His red-haired companion wore a similar outfit but without the tattoo and piercings, lacking the courage – or the idiocy – to turn a fashion statement into permanent disfigurement. They.
Moria would storm out against their wishes. Yet Ashyn was coming to accept that she could not be her sister, and it was not a failure of nerve. It was a difference of inner composition. They might look identical without; they were not identical within.
Angst. Fear. Stark, gut-twisting terror. It didn’t make for an easy sleep.
Only humans kill for sport.
Other parents warn their kids not to talk to strangers. I had to warn mine not to eat them.
The far wall was covered with pictures of me – a montage of photographs and sketches that reminded me of the “altars” found in the homes of obsessed psychopaths, which, all things considered, wasn’t such a bad description of Clay.
You thought you were fine. Everyone else knew better.
After that, my life paused. Or, more accurately, I paused. I stood at the tracks, watching the train whip past. At first, I didn’t care. When I finally did, I couldn’t figure out what to do about it. My dreams and my future and part of my soul died with Michael, but now, deep inside, a voice has begun to scream that I’m letting the best years of my life slip past.
That’s the true reveal in Rockton. Not discovering someone lied about their background or committed a crime in their past. It’s finding out they aren’t the person you thought they were, their underlying character hidden behind a false front.
I was never getting my old life back, and i didn’t care. I was happy.
He smiled. A real smile that lit up his whole face.
Everyone needs things that serve no greater purpose than to make them happy.
Guilt comes back to haunt us in the weirdest ways.
His lips pressed against mine, then parted. And he kissed me. Really kissed me – arms tightening around me, mouth moving against mine, firm, like he’d made up his mind that this was what he wanted and he wasn’t backing down again.