Goodbye, Mr. Regret

Timothy stared at the message on his phone, his dark eyes fixed on the glowing

screen for a long while.

[Do you like it?]

He typed a reply.

[Yeah, just like Happy and Lucky.]

He pressed his lips together, thinking.

If Sheila liked them, there was no harm in giving her one too.

There were twenty-two left.

He bought them all, though he only intended to keep one.

The rest, he'd throw away.

It was just an excuse to set one aside for Sheila.

[If you like it, keep it.]

Capital City.

Jessica was too afraid to sleep. She huddled in the corner of the hotel room, knees pulled to her chest, shivering so hard her fingernails nearly broke the skin of her palms.

Every clap of thunder struck like a hammer against her heart.

world briefly flicker into view. The wind howled, rain hammered the windows with a relentless drone, and Jessica felt her

crashed over

and

told her to run to the corner store for a bottle of

had spent ages picking out candy, even choosing a

on the way home, swinging her bag of groceries, when

was a sickening

When she finally looked, she saw

eyes stared wide and

head in dark, snaking

from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Her skin was as

that a

surrounded

crashed to the ground. She pushed through

to call out, to scream for

parted, but

thunder and

their apartment, and

her mother's broken

outside never stopped, battering her small world with

understood why her

in her body, the time she'd wasted picking out

she had come home earlier, maybe

teeth, hands shaking as she pulled out her

screen was blinding in the pitch-black

Her lips trembled.

nearly made her drop