Jay is no longer a competing ice skater. He was at some point, so long ago that it seems like a forgotten memory. Now, though, he lives in a smaller town, with smaller minds, and less room for people like him. He sneaks to skate on the frozen lake in the wintertime. Will is new, which is rare in and of itself. But there's something about his ginger ale hair and bubbling laughs that call Jay to him. And, Will is happy to have the company. Jay, slowly, is learning to call Will his place to belong. *** Part 1: Kissing Will Part 2: Kissing Will Pas de Deux Part 3: Christmas Special Highest Ranking: #126 in Short Story

When you are infected with the virus, there are four stages. 1) Your fever will shoot up and everything will become intensified on a maximum level. You'll lose grip on what's reality and what's illusion. 2) You'll start to slowly fall down the rabbit hole, forgetting the past and everything and everyone that you knew. 3) You face your imminent death. 4) You wake up with a pressing hunger for the living. It's been seven months since the pandemic hit with this virus and the world has been ravaged and left to ruins. Society has crumbled to nothing and more than three fourths of the population have been infected with the mysterious virus that took the world by storm. The virus has turned anyone infected into crazed flesh-eating freaks, with decrepit skin and red puffy eyes. The only way to kill them is by obliterating the brain. Elise Alice Gordon, Lease for short, led a simple life until the virus hit. Seven months later she is just barely scraping by. She's done what she's had to do to survive, and in that process she has created demons that haunt her every time she closes her eyes. See, it hasn't been easy trying to live in a dead world. She's lost friends, family, and everything she's ever known. The only thing she hasn't lost is her humanity and her hope. But she's afraid she's starting to. Because in this new world, there's only her, the dead, and the restless. © 2012 by Ashtyn Mane. All rights reserved.

"we spend all this time waiting for tomorrow, yet it never arrives." the story of a boy who writes to his insecurities. the story of another who saves him. {phan} {lowercase intentional} {trigger warning: depression, implied self-harm/mentions of suicide}