Aunt

It was as if she didn't understand the concept of 'shut up'. She would talk constantly without any moments of silence. Even when she was reading a newspaper she did it out loud and added her comments to what she was reading. Whenever she was watching a movie she would comment on the actions of the characters. She didn't really listen to what others were talking about. She knew every single event that was mentioned and she claimed that she had been there and had totally different version of the events than anybody else who had really been there. It was impossible to convince her or to show her your point of view and that made her even more annoying than she already was. The constant rambling and thinking out loud was something that made people go crazy around her. She would still continue doing it even when people asked her to stop. It was as if she wasn't aware of what she was doing or had no control over it whatsoever. 20 minute drive to the city centre with her was my little hell but my decent upbringing didn't allow me to throw her out in the suburbs, since she was one of my elderly aunts. So I just kept quiet and continued to steer towards the quiet salvation that city centre promised me.

The boss

Angry was the boss's default setting. One could rarely see him calm and serious. Most often he would be screaming his head off at someone who had messed something up. Funny thing is he always just happened to be in the right place when someone of his employees messed up big time. Maybe it was his mere presence that made people's minds go blank and forget the simplest of routines. Anyway, if he was not screaming at anyone in person he was either yelling at someone on the phone or storming around the office in search of a scapegoat. Whenever anyone had an urgent issue to be discussed he tried to find partners in crime who would agree to go with him. It was a common practice to face the fury with a couple of comrades. Therefore Tuesday was so astonishing. The boss arrived 2 hours later than usual and he was smiling. Whoever he met in the corridor looked around in disbelief as if looking for confirmation that they are not crazy. Behind boss back confused glaces were exchanged and all 40 eyes were wide open, terrified even. No one knew what this means and everyone quietly were preparing themselves for the worst possible scenario.

Box

Amongst her mother's possessions, she found an old jewelry box. It was a small, greenish wooden box with ancient carvings on its sides and lid. A tiny lock kept its content secure from the eyes of other. Lilly rumbled through the draw but couldn't find the key. Then she remembered that her mother used to wear a necklace with a key. Could it fit? The run downstairs and turned the hospital bag upside down. Its content spilled all over the coffee table and some on the floor. She quickly skimmed through the items until she found what she was looking for. A small silver necklace with an odd looking key at the end of it. She took the key with the necklace and hurried upstairs. The box was still there, waiting on the dusty table. Carefully she put the key in the lock and had a wave of excitement rolling over her when it fit. She turned the key and felt more than heard the soft click. The lock slid out of its place. Breathless she carefully opened the lid and what she found inside was a small, handwritten letter addressed to her mother.

Susan

It will be fall, the season of fear and giggling. Susan was quite excited to face the challenges ahead but the terror of all unknown was still lurking in shadows, ambushing and just waiting for the right moment to trigger her panic attack. Luckily her panic attacks were so very different from what other people experienced. She didn't freeze, her heart was not racing and she was not having any trouble breathing. In times of panic Susan laughed. Not just a polite little ha-ha but a real infectious laugh making everyone around her unable to resist joining her. It usually started with soft, barely audible chuckles turning into short outbursts of suppressed giggles slowly escalating to loud guffaw until Susan was holding her stomach in abdominal pain, tears rolling down her cheeks and fighting for breath and her mind begging to stop this madness. Though the hardest part of all of this was the aftermath and all the explanation. How to explain to the relatives of your friend that you tittering at the friend's death was not intentional, that it was just a mere defensive mechanism of your body.

She ...

Sarcasm was her favourite form of flattery. She actually rarely said anything that was not sarcasm. It was her language. Oddly enough she didn't have black soul and she was not a gloomy goth. Behind the sarcasm was a nice, kind person who deeply cared about others and who would walk an extra mile to help a friend. She would never admit that all her remarks are not really about her, because they sounded way cooler than she saw herself. Everything looked cooler if it was wrapped in tasteful sarcasm, sprinkled with bitterness and served cold and calm. She thought that it gave her the shade of naughty. She never knew if other people saw her the same way. She only knew that sarcastic comments gave her the needed confidence and of course it was fun.

Linguist

I have a tale about justice, death, and a linguist. However, the season and the weather probably was yet another character in this story. The heat had been unbearable for more than two weeks already. It was so hot that the pavement was scorching feet through the sole of shoes if you stood too long. Due to lack of sleep and constant discomfort people were grumpy and hot headed. Even the smallest incident could lead to cursing and even fights. The aforementioned linguist was the grumpiest of them all. He had been this way for years. He hated people. the only thing he liked about humans was language and to his mind people actually misused and treated it badly nowadays. He liked to be in the basement of the library looking through the old scrolls of text - analyzing and admiring them. There was, however, a tiny, nudging problem - the university had assigned him an assistant and that young fag just couldn't shut up and work in silence for more then 5 minutes. So, as the heat rose for two more degrees and even the basement of the library turned into a little hell on the earth, the linguist just lost it. He felt his head spin in anger and dizziness of heat and assistant's constant blabbing. He grabbed the paper knife so tight that his knuckles went white and suddenly he stabbed it in the assistant's chest and breathed out in relief as he went silent .

Underground

Only the very oldest people remembered a time when humans could see in colour. No one had seen real sunlight, swum in the sea or seen wild mammals in centuries. People been living under ground for so long that they have adapted to the constant dim light and heavy air. It all started with the food grown in labs and some underground parks and slowly expanded to more and more facilities. The conditions on the surface also got worse due to the effects of global warming serving as yet another reason to relocate. Technologies had advanced quicker than ever as the 3 world's biggest tech companies united and offered enormous grants to every young engineer with brilliant idea. This is how nutrition bracelets, oxygen backpacks and portable food labs appeared. With time underground people lost any contact with the surface of the earth.

Car Keys

As she searched, her movements were frantic. She knew it must be in her bag, but rummaging through the endless amount of items in the bag she just couldn't find it.what was it about female bags that you could never find a damn thing in them even if your life depended on it. The sense of fear crept on her slowly. She hated standing here in a dark parking lot alone. She felt how panic gradually soaked into her making her heart race madly, breath sharpen and tears roll down her cheeks. She dropped her lipstick and comb and bet down to pick them up. Then she put her bag on the ground and squatted next to it and continued rummaging through the bags content. Suddenly, a lightning of relief struck her as her fingers joggled the metal bundle of keys until they took a firm grasp of it. She stood up, opened her car doors and sat in the drivers seat. Then she breathed out heavily and wiped of the marks of tears. Then she fastened her seat belt, put both arms on the wheel and instinctively looked into the rear view mirror only to find two cold eyes staring back at her from the backseat of her car.

The Well

There was a legend about the well in the garden. It said that if you drink from it at midnight on Midsummer night and then look in the well you can see your future wife or husband. People even tell incredible stories about a poor fellow who had seen the daughter of the nobleman. At first people had laughed at him when he announced that he is going to marry her, because he was just a poor servant. However, time passed and during the war things changed.He became a general due to his persistence and bravery. He also took such a good care of his fiancee's family, who had lost almost everything, that they were happy to give their blessing to this marriage. After their marriage people had no doubt about the well and its magic. Every year during the midsummer festival old and young formed a line to drink the magic water and look into the well. This year I was among them and my turn was approaching fast.

The house

The door was closed, and as I put my hand on the handle, I felt afraid of what we might find. I had been walking past this house for years as a kid but never dared to go inside. Even when Jim threw me a challenge to enter the house one summer day during my 5th grade I still chose to eat 3 very alive worms instead. And here I was 10 years later still terrified to bits. Suddenly, all the local weird legends about this place came back to me. A husband gutted in front of his 3 children by his jealous wife, a mobster using the place for "quiet talks" with the people who where later nowhere to be found, a crazy loner lurking in the shadows of the house luring kids in to the garden. Those where just some of the stories and not even the creepiest. Even adults used to chose paths that didn't lead too close to the house. So what was really in there? I was about to find out.

The plan

He looked at his phone, turned pale, then quickly left the room. She watched him, smiling. She enjoyed every second of it but she kept quiet. She knew exactly who was calling, what message was given and what he felt. Well, she could imagine what he felt because he had been going through all this nightmare for three months now. Now it was his turn. She heard his rapid footsteps on the second floor and could almost see him pacing in the bedroom, his eye bulged, his forehead sweaty and his hand fidgeting and running through his thinning hair. She stopped the urge to go upstairs and observe. She should act like she knew nothing at all. It was really hard because she wanted to laugh in his disgusting, cheating face and tell everything. But the he wouldn't suffer enough; then it would be only a brief moment of humiliation. She wanted him to pay for every single night she spent crying, for every line of gossip that traveled around the town about her and for every sympathetic look and whisper she noticed when she left the house.

Invisible battle

The urge to interrupt him before he had finished was overwhelming. She fidgeted a little and continued to look at him. This need didn't go away, it was like itching - drove you crazy if you couldn't scratch it. He was blabbing away about his adventures in London for good 5 minutes and she had amazing story to tell about the accident in London's tube. She was afraid that he will change the subject and there will not be a reasonable chance to tell this story. And here it was he had switched his topic to squatters and freegans. The opportunity was lost. She smiled and nodded but her mind was racing, searching for some good stories, adventures or just jokes about the given topic. He continued without any real breaks, like he was afraid that she might say something and take over the conversation.

Family curse

The whole family had been cursed since the middle ages. A spiteful spinster had done all she could to make sure that this family will never have happy marriages and there would always be single mothers struggling to feed every mouth in the house.  All that evil due to one dance with the wrong partner. The great grandmother's loving husband had turned into a mean alcoholic who had terrorized the whole family. The grandmother's husband had died in the war leaving her with five little daughters and none of the five sisters ever got married except her mother. Her own father had disappeared in the sea during the fishing incident. Those were just some cases from her family history she knew. Now she was engaged with Andy and she wanted it to last. She wanted to break the curse. Therefore she was here in this small room of plenty weird odors and an old woman with an uncomfortably piercing gaze. 

Susan

There had been many theories about how she had been murdered, but no one knew for sure. All the gossipers in the town had divided in to three large groups  - the ones who believed that her husband killed her and hid her body in the graveyard when he organized the funeral of old Milly McGvair; the ones who were convinced that it was a migrant from Eastern Europe who killed her and then hid her body, since it was a common knowledge that those migrants knew incredible way of getting rid of the bodies; and finally the ones who were sure it was Amy Sullivan who did it, yet they were not sure what she could have done with the body and whether or not she had had an accomplice. Then there were also minor weird theory believers but none of them had any similar theories. There was one common trait they all shared - they all believed that Susan had been murdered. Now and then one or another group would pay visit to the Police to share their theories or new conclusions thus making a fuss about the case again. However, as the time passed the visits became less frequent. Therefore, the day she purposefully walked along the main street towards the town hall, every one stared at her wide-eyed in disbelief, almost angry that they had been being fooled all this time.