A.Journal

Checks

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Challenging

As if waiting to be caught.

Challenging

His face contorted in fury, caught mid-scream, disintegrating in strips of light.

Challenging

A single tear of blood as the metal ricochets around his skull.

Challenging

A single tear of blood as the metal ricochets around his skull.

Challenging

He means this as a compliment.

Challenging

What would they notice? Another unremarkable tram, making its daily commute? Or might they sense, on some cardinal level, the contamination you've untethered, the frightful hazard more primitive nations would have marked with rings of salt and paper seals?

Challenging

A barely-perceptible edge to the way he says 'that name'.

Challenging

He respects the idea of this love even if he would despise its reality.

Challenging

He bites his lip, apprehensive.

Challenging

And because he's tense, beneath it all. Finger on trigger tense.

Challenging

Through the mask, she's fixing you with an intense stare.

Challenging

Behind the mask, a death glare aimed in her friend's direction.

Challenging

The man is a vision of comfort and security. Remember that move for later.

Challenging

The man is a vision of comfort and security. Remember that move for later.

Challenging

Challenging

She does think he's real.

Challenging

Rhetorical question. She's undecided but you won't be able to push her one way or the other.

Challenging

Challenging

She still wants to impress you, to help you. After all this.

Challenging

A dry sound meant to approximate polite laughter.

Challenging

But not before she got a good eyeful, the little minx.

Challenging

Pale, moist, clammy. Like a deformed frog plucked from the canal there.

Challenging

The way forward is obvious. Duchess surely knows what this 'gap' is all about.

Challenging

She laughs, but there's an edge to it.

Challenging

She's not her sister, in other words.

Challenging

You're not afraid of any empty space. Fill it the fuck in.

Challenging

Rings honest enough, but there's something more.

Challenging

His trigger finger twitches.

Challenging

It sounds like a yelp of pain.

Challenging

Wait. There's something off about this woman's off-ness... she's not what she appears to be.

Challenging

She raises a finger to the heavens, threatening the angels not to challenge her authority on the matter.

Challenging

His face twitches on the razorblade between perverse delight and terror.

Challenging

The soundless words are clear on his lips: 'I was held in one'.

Challenging

Cowed, shrunken, SLAVA ages ten years as the feeling of betrayal sinks in.

Challenging

As he's talking, his whole posture changes -- a lightness across his features.

Challenging

His full-force gaze reminds you of meeting the sharks in Mircea Aquarium eye-to-eye. Empty yet full, processing alien thoughts.

Challenging

Something about this rejection feels more than just embarrassing. It feels dangerous.

Challenging

A note of sadness in his voice.

Challenging

It's impossible to tell which limb moves next -- beware!

Challenging

His eyes look like lava. He is erupting.

Challenging

He was the one holding the clipboard.

Challenging

That little jump he gave when you walked in the door -- you're the first visitor he's had in a while.

Challenging

In herself, she means. In her own mind.

Challenging

A glancing flash of a person overlayed upon another -- like a stencil nudged off its overlay.

Challenging

As if they might be waiting just outside it.

Challenging

No self-awareness whatsoever.

Challenging

He hits you with a wink.

Challenging

He smiles at you, a benevolent and kindly expression.

Challenging

Eyebrows knotting, unable to imagine a desire. Look at you.

Challenging

He doesn't give a FUCK.