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 others. Lilly rumbled through the drawer but couldn't find the key. Then she remembered that her mother used to wear a necklace with a key. Could it fit? They run downstairs and turned the hospital bag upside down. Its contents 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 than 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.