He believed he had the crowd in the palm of his hand, teasing them, provoking them, then hitting them with the punchline when they least expected. He heard their laughter. They were his.

She was the awful one but he was the one they took outside and shot in the head.

Judge Lehman banged her gavel, demanding silence.

“Yes, but this was an extreme outlier. You obviously don’t understand statistics.”

George and Kristen were counselors at the Lake Wakona Christian Retreat. They’d met there several years before as campers and were eager to become reacquainted now that they were in high school.

Fortunately, George and Kristen would spend the rest of their lives together. Unfortunately, they were both killed that summer by the Lake Wakona chainsaw butcher.

He dreamed of realities that could never be. He dreamed of being an Olympian. He dreamed of winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He dreamed of traveling to Mars and back or building a time machine. He dreamed he had the power to grant every wish. He dreamed of immortality. He dreamed he was the Creator and this entire world was a figment of his own imagination. He dreamed of true love.

Because of all these impossible dreams, he never achieved any of his dreams that were actually attainable. They all seemed pointless when compared to what was impossible.

Jodi watched the rain through the picture window. She’d never be allowed outside as long as the weather continued, but she looked and she plotted and she convinced herself that what her parents didn’t know couldn’t be punished.

Although Jodi fought valiantly, she succumbed to the same fate as her great-grandmother. Witches just weren’t meant to battle against rain.

Buzan was an idiot-savant. His memory was prodigious, but he could not make use of the information he could recall. His parents discovered that he was an extraordinary pianist. He would play a piece through, having only heard it once on the family phonograph. He often “composed” pieces on the spot, some derived from the tones generated by the appliances in his mother’s kitchen, or his father’s shop. Most of his day was spent in the corner of the front porch playing rock, paper, scissors, by himself. The hours would fly by, and Buzan would nap on the porch swing.

From Guest Contributor, Thomas Pitre