There was a time when he would have embraced the change that was coming.

In his youth, he sought

adventure and the unknown, but that had been years ago. He wished he could go back and learn to find
the excitement that came with change but it was useless. That curiosity had long left him to where he
had come to loathe anything that put him out of his comfort zone.

Betty decided to write a short story and she was sure it was going to be amazing. She had already
written it in her head and each time she thought about it she grinned from ear to ear knowing how
wonderful it would be. She could imagine the accolades coming in and the praise she would receive for
creating such a wonderful piece. She was therefore extremely frustrated when she actually sat down to
write the short story and the story that was so beautiful inside her head refused to come out that way
on paper.

He collected the plastic trash on a daily basis. It never seemed to end. Even if he cleaned the entire
beach, more plastic would cover it the next day after the tide had come in. Although it was a futile effort
that would never be done, he continued to pick up the trash each day.

She had been an angel for coming up on 10 years and in all that time nobody had told her this was
possible. The fact that it could ever happen never even entered her mind. Yet there she stood, with the
undeniable evidence sitting on the ground before her. Angels could lose their wings.

Dave wasn't exactly sure how he had ended up in this predicament. He ran through all the events that
had lead to this current situation and it still didn't make sense. He wanted to spend some time to try and
make sense of it all, but he had higher priorities at the moment. The first was how to get out of his
current situation of being naked in a tree with snow falling all around and no way for him to get down.

They had no proof. He knew that they knew he had done it but they didn't have any proof. It was a huge
distinction and it was the difference between him keeping his freedom or being locked away for
decades. They continued to question him, probing him for information that they could use against him
or find the proof they needed to put him away. He smiled and continued to block their every inquiry by
feigning his innocence for a crime they all knew he committed.

There wasn't a bird in the sky, but that was not what caught her attention. It was the clouds. The deep
green that isn't the color of clouds, but came with these. She knew what was coming and she hoped she
was prepared.

There was something in the tree. It was difficult to tell from the ground, but Rachael could see
movement. She squinted her eyes and peered in the direction of the movement, trying to decipher
exactly what she had spied. The more she peered, however, the more she thought it might be a figment
of her imagination. Nothing seemed to move until the moment she began to take her eyes off the tree.
Then in the corner of her eye, she would see the movement again and begin the process of staring
again.

His parents continued to question him. He didn't know what to say to them since they refused to believe
the truth. He explained again and again, and they dismissed his explanation as a figment of his
imagination. There was no way that grandpa, who had been dead for five years, could have told him
where the treasure had been hidden. Of course, it didn't help that grandpa was roaring with laughter in
the chair next to him as he tried to explain once again how he'd found it.
The boy walked down the street in a carefree way, playing without notice of what was about him. He
didn't hear the sound of the car as his ball careened into the road. He took a step toward it, and in doing
so sealed his fate.