You’re driving. It is deepest night. You are on a mountain road.
The mist is so thick you can see only a few feet ahead. You have your high beams on but they scarcely illuminate the way through this ghost world of fog. You can’t tell how close you are to the edge of the road. You can’t tell how close you are to falling off the side of the mountain road.
    You’re driving slow, so very slow. Your knuckles are white from gripping the steering wheel as hard as you can. Clenching forward trying to see through the vapor but you can only glimpse shadows.
    Something huge and rumbling roars past you on the other side of the road. It must have been a truck but you couldn’t see it clearly. Was it just a truck? But it sounded different. It sounded almost alive and yet like nothing that should be alive.
How long have you been on this road? You can’t tell anymore.
    Ages of this tortured, fevered driving. You have a full tank of gas at least but it doesn’t comfort you. Your neck is stiff. Sweat makes your shirt stick to you.
    You can’t remember driving into this fog. You can’t remember not driving through here.
Then you realize.
    Then you know as the mist parts and the road opens up before you and your dimly lit destination spreads out before. You’ve driven to a place that you never meant to go. A place with no road back.
    The fog is all behind you now.

    Drake stared at the story that danced at the edge of his cup. She was only seventeen inches tall but she was a beautiful one. Hair like soft red rain, eyes of blue flame, lips full and rich.
    She was the loveliest story Drake had ever seen.
    The trouble was he didn’t know what to do about her.
    Usually he took the stories that came leaping, cavorting, and nimbly dancing to him and put them into his blender. Then of course he would drink their sweet nectar. As he tasted their words, ideas, and plots he would type them up.
    This story was too beautiful. It was too wonderful. He couldn’t face killing it even to drink it.
    He watched the pretty story dance for days.
    How could something so beautiful exist? If she looked that good how exquisite would she taste? The question haunted him.
    Finally he grabbed the story.
    She was so pretty his hand burned at her touch.
    Drake screamed and held her tight. He jammed her into the blender. He turned away and pressed the puree button. Then he quickly poured the story into his cup and drank her in one swallow.
    He waited for something beautiful.
    He waited to feel something that was more beautiful than anything he could have ever conceived.
    Nothing.
    He felt nothing.
    Drake sat down and cried. He felt the story leak out of him in sweet pretty tears. The tears pooled on the floor and reformed back into the story.
    She shook her gorgeous head at Drake and danced off into the sunset leaving him all alone.

           

   

When the steak knife first spoke to Marc he never questioned it. The knife didn’t have a  mouth, Marc could just hear its voice in his head. The knife’s voice was filled with trust and warm friendship and it seemed to know things that Marc didn’t. It was smart.
    The first time the knife spoke it told Marc that his friend Sean was cheating him at cards and it even proved it to Marc by telling him exactly what hand Sean was holding. So later that same night after their card game had ended and all his other friends had gone home, the knife told Marc exactly how to kill Sean. It described in great detail where Marc should hide Sean’s body and how to best cut him into little pieces. It had worked perfectly. No one ever questioned Marc about Sean’s disappearance. His body was never found.
    A few months passed and eventually the knife told Marc something very shocking. Marc’s boss Neil was about to take the credit for Marc’s project. Marc had always thought that Neil was his friend. He never would have suspected this betrayal. The next day Marc snuck into Neil’s office. He logged onto Neil’s computer using the password the knife gave him and found his project with Neil’s name on it.
    The knife told Marc how to kill Neil and dispose of him so that he wouldn’t be found.
    Eventually Marc was given Neil’s job.
    Marc started taking the knife with him wherever he went.
    One day the knife told Marc that his girlfriend Samantha had been cheating on him. It told Marc to kill her.            
    He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t do that. He loved Samantha. He was planning on marrying her. There was just no way. He told the knife he couldn’t. The knife kept telling Marc to kill her. Relentlessly over and over again it told Marc to murder Samantha. Finally Marc shoved the knife into a kitchen drawer. He ignored its voice which was muffled by the drawer. Eventually it stopped talking to him.
    Then one night Marc came home and found Samantha in the kitchen. She had the knife in her hand. Before he could say or do anything Samantha plunged the knife into his chest.
    “You killed Sean!” she yelled. She yelled it again and again as she cut Marc into tiny pieces.