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It was 1:15 AM, but the air was still warm from the summer's day; Sean and Joel were resting at the bottom of the hill overlooking Paint Mill Lake. It was the largest lake in Terre Haute, but it wasn't very big. Above them, atop the hill, lie the only six houses within two square miles. They had both snuck out of their houses, and were meeting at their usual hangout. There was only one house with it's light on, and there wasn't a person in sight. The full moon stood tall in the sky, and the superstitious boys were on edge. But otherwise, this night was perfect. Little did the boys know it would be the worst night of their lives.

"Man, I love this boat!" Joel said as he pulled the raft down the hill. Sean had won the inflatable raft during the school fund-raiser. It was small, but nice.

"I know, it's awesome," Sean agreed. He was proud of it, and tried not to brag, but it was hard after selling five hundred dollars worth of crap to get it. The boys did this often. In the middle of the night they would travel to their favorite strip of beach, as small as it was, and watch the water. As soon as they began getting restless, they would slide the boat down the rocky sand, and into the water; they would both hop in and paddle into the middle of the lake. Joel and Sean could talk for hours: girls, money, parents, life, dreams, goals, the future, anything.

The lights of a car hit the trees above them, so they casually walked over and crouched down behind a group of trees. Cars were more of a bother than a threat, neither of the boys were afraid of getting caught. But the lights went out before they could hear the car. "Where did he go?" Joel whispered rhetorically.

"I don't know," Sean answered, annoyed by the question, "Maybe he turned around." But the car came closer, into the range of hearing, and it was still coming toward them, with it's lights off. The engine was silent; the only noise was from the rocks grinding each other with the weight of the vehicle.

The brakes squeaked quietly, and the engine went off. The door opened, and a figure appeared from the driver's side. "It's a man," Joel thought out loud.

"Oh, thanks," Sean's response was soaked in sarcasm. The man walked around to the back of the car. He stopped and looked around for a moment, as if he wanted to make sure no one was watching. The boys became nervous. The man was definitely up to something. He slowly walked down the sidewalk to the back of the house, and glanced in the glass door.

Because of the slope of the hill, they could only see the ceiling of the room through the door. The flashing blue lights on the ceiling gave away the presence of a television, despite the well lighting of the room. The boys were unable to tell if there was anyone in the room.

The man cleared the window and returned to the back of his car. He inserted the key into the trunk and opened it as quietly as possible. He reached in and pulled something out. He held it up, as if he was admiring it. The light of the moon shone bright, and the boys held their breath. They both knew what it was.

"Remington," Joel whispered, with fear in his voice. Sean was silent. It was definitely a Remington: the barrel was stunted, and the stock had been removed. It was hardly a foot long. The stunted barrel was unmistakable: that shotgun wasn't for hunting, that shotgun was for killing.

"Let's go." The way Sean said it made Joel's spine shiver. There was no fear at all in his voice. He sounded intent, as if he had thought about it before he had said it. He almost sounded angry. Joel would never forget those words, never.

"Where?" Joel whispered as he grabbed Sean's shoulder and tried to pull him back to the cover of the tree.

"What's gonna happen when he fires that shotgun?" Sean questioned impatiently. "It's going to be loud, good job. Loud noises wake up parents; now what happens when your mom wakes up to the sound of a shotgun and finds you gone?"

Joel was truly scared. Not of the man with the gun, but of Sean. His thought didn't make any sense. "We've got to do something!" Joel scolded, as loud as he dared.

"What do you think you can do? You go up there and you'll get us both shot!" Sean was getting very impatient. "If we walk away right now without looking back, he probably won't see us. And even if he does, if we walk normally he'll never know we saw anything. If we can get back to our houses, when the police show up, we'll be able to identify that guy."

His plan made sense, but Joel didn't like it at all. "What about the people up there?" Joel questioned.


"How in the world you think you're gonna save them? You'll get killed Joel, and you know it. Face the facts, whoever's in that room is already dead. If that guy plans on shooting the people in that room, he's gonna do it, even if he has to shoot us first."

Joel felt helpless; they were going to die. He didn't know who was up there, but they were going to die. "Let's get their attention, we can use a rock or something."

Sean was disgusted as he returned to the cover of the tree. "Just wait, attracting them won't help."

The man was on the move again. During the boy's tense conversation, he had been putting shells into the barrels. He was taking his time; he knew what he was about to do, and was very calm about it. He re-approached the sliding glass door, but this time, instead of standing to one side, he stood in the center. The shotgun was in his right hand, hidden behind his leg. Slowly, he lifted his empty hand and tapped lightly on the glass three times.

A couple seconds later, a girl approached the door, and slid it open just enough for him to hear what she had to say: "What do you think you're doing here?" She yelled, "Get out of here before I call the -." The man raised his right hand, set the barrel of the gun to the glass, and pulled the trigger before she could say another word.

The night shattered with the falling of the glass. The man was gone. Within minutes people surrounded the scene. Children inside the house were screaming, and from where the boys sat on the coast, they could already hear the sound of police sirens far off in the distance.

Joel was still staring at the same spot five minutes after the trigger had been pulled. His mouth still stood open, and the tears rolling down his cheeks were silent. Joel looked as if he were about to die. As if he were the one who had been shot. As if he had suffered more than her. A haunting smirk came over Sean's face as he whispered to Joel, "You should have gone home."

spoiler tags for your stories are optional.

"...and at that point, I just told myself I abolutely had to get away for awhile. The stress was literally killing me, you know?"

Mrs. Delilah Nixan-Sullivan looked out her frosty window and heaved a deep sigh of contentment. Life as an Alaskan businesswoman paid well, but it most certainly wasn't an easy job to have. Delilah's 30-year-old face should have looked happy and young, but instead, her bright eyes were cradled by encroaching wrinkles, and her smile was caged by tired lines around her mouth. Her casual shirt was faintly stained with a crayon, wielded by her three year old daughter.

"I understand completely." The middle aged woman seated across from her nodded sympathetically, her eyes glinting. "You have to get away once in awhile, yeah?" The two ladies smiled in shared empathy.

"Well, I'm going to get some breakfast, Mary. I'll see you a little later, hm?" The other woman smiled and replied that she was going to spend some time with a relative for the rest of the day, and that perhaps she would see Delilah again on the next day.

As Delilah trotted down the hallway to the luxurious boat's diner area, she had a small queasy feeling come upon her suddenly. She looked down at the floor, and then out at a nearby window. The waves outside crashed against the boat, threatening in their volume and force. Swallowing the odd lump in her throat, she attempted a throaty chuckle. "I'm so glad I have this steady floor to stand on!" she muttered to herself. Chuckling again at the ridiculousness and abruptness of her last statement, she continued: "After all, it would be pretty hard to relax without the floor!" There was no one else in the hallway, and the slow creaking of the boat as it turned gently from side to side sent a chill up her spine. A thickly bound book, resting on a chair, slid off to the floor with an ominous, hollow thunk.

A bit nervously Delilah continued down the hallway, stopping as a man's piercing yell rang out through the boat.
"We're approaching something large! Nobody panic! Please-"

His words were cruelly cut short by a long, heart-stopping crunch as the boat slammed into something hard. Water began gushing in, and blood began gushing out. Screams, wails, shouts of fear drowned Delilah's ears, though her lungs managed to survive. As her body was thrown into the water, a small green object flew at her and landed on the water. With a small gasp the woman realized it was a child's float, the kind you put around your waist and lean your head back on. She grasped for it hungrily and tucked it around her waist, floating slowly away from the fiery, bloody, watery remains of her cruise ship.

Hardly five minutes passed, and with a dumbfounded expression on her face, Delilah watched the last tendril of smoke from the ship pass out of view. Endless swathes of water stretched out around her and her small floaty, the swift waves gently raising them up and down. Tears began to flow from her once she fully comprehended what had just happened to her, and what the situation was. Being a woman of strong reserve, however, she grasped her floaty and racked her brain for some way to reach the shore.

The crashing of the waves rubbed and irritated the rash on her mind more than any boisterous music might, making it impossible for the woman to think. She let out an exasperated grunt of self deprecation. "Why in the hells would this happen to ME?" The grunt turned into a shriek. "I am only a common woman, trying to relax on a vacation!" She would have laughed if it weren't for the bitter tears she wept, at the utter irony of the ship's crash.

An hour passed. Sixty minutes - thirty-six hundred seconds - forty centuries..."Ohhh..." With bleary, salt-ridden eyes the broken woman was quite a sight, floating in the middle of the ocean with a green, bubble-eyed monster around her midriff.

Two hours. Delilah was starting to feel a gnawing hunger - judging from the sun's position it was just after noon, and she had not broken her fast. The scent of the warm salty air only accentuated this pain.

Four more hours. The sun was starting to set, and with desperation Delilah shook herself from a hunger-ridden delirium in order to look around for any sign of hope. Nothing...just the waves...

14 hours. The middle-aged woman had fallen asleep, the rushing of the waves and the cradling arms of her flotation device cuddling her to rest. When she awoke, the stars were nearly faded out, and the sun was beginning to peep at her from east. The hunger was the only thing she felt now.

Five days. She had not slept, only fallen repeatedly into a hungry delirium. She sat limp, so hopelessly entwined with her floaty, that she had given up all hope of rescue. Reclining into the green creature's grasp, she managed to croak a few words.

"I...might as well relax...that's...wha...why I came here. After all...I wanted to...relax." Her throat burned from the effort, and she leaned her head back onto the bulbous, surprisingly inflated support of the floaty. Her eyes rolled back and she sighed, contentedly.

Two months later, another boat floated down similar waters. Through his loud speaker, the captain let out a throaty chuckle. "We've got clear waters for the next five days, my weather report says, so be sure to relax outside everyone!" A loud chorus of cheers rang up across the boat's many departments, and one couple toasted to each other outside the pool.

One man approached the captain's quarters, timidly knocking on the door. As he was admitted, he nodded his head. "Our men have spotted something ahead of us on the water. Looks like a flotation device with some sort of dummy attached, or something."

"Well, go check it out then." The captain smiled and resumed watching something on television.

A little while later, the man came back, with a pale face. "We need you to see this, sir." The captain, with an irritated sigh, followed the man down to the boat's undocking section, where a large cloth covered a mass. With a flourish he tore it off.

Two bloodshot swollen eyes stared amusedly at him. The horrifying smell of salty decaying flesh filled the captain's nostrils as he watched the rotting woman's skin peel off of her in lengthy strips.
What was most disturbing, however, was the fact that her arms were folded across her lap peacefully. Her head reclined on the deflating floaty's head rest, and there was a sickly, happy smile across her half-eaten lip. Perhaps she had relaxed after all.

The burger
Once there was a magical burger in Tamriel that was evil it liked to eat every ones tomatos.But it was said to taste better then every thing in Tamriel.There was two adventurers whose names has been lost in history who found the magical burger. when they found it they each wanted to eat it themselves but a random person who had a sword came and cut the burger in two so they could both have some. The End.