The squirrel flung itself from the falling limb, tail spinning wildly to orient itself and angle toward another twig before crunching to the ground.

It wasn’t long before the inside of the manor house glowed with an orange light. Flames licked up the sides of the window frames as heavy draperies caught fire.

The irony of the situation was the hardest part. “What five items would you take with you if you were stranded on a deserted island?” How many times had that question, or some variation of it, been asked as an ice breaker?

My mind went to all manner of fairy tales and fantasy monsters that lurk in such places…wraiths and dementors and who knows what else. But I have always prided myself on being a rational person. There’s no such thing as monsters.

She walked through the hall and felt the floorboards creak beneath her feet, like the bones creaking inside her body. They were the same.

As the days turned, I began to sink further into my cozy tray, feeling myself forming more and more to the grooves of my dish. What a lovely sensation, to grow into your home.

You needed to drink covfefe quickly, otherwise the resin would stick to the cup. Everyone knew this, but you’d still occasionally see some poor soul tearing their paper cup apart with their teeth and hungrily eating scraps of it to get at the residue.

Despite the fact that she couldn’t make toast and brew coffee at the same time without flipping the breaker, she found this place to have a simple charm, in the way only a penny-poor young woman with a fresh taste of independence would.