Ouch. I'm still glad I read it though.

Oh, Liese.

Crikey. Liese, damn.

Oh my Liese.

Also, what you do is so important. You contribute joy to people's lives. Thank you.

Sail, that was very clever. Love it.

Deb, I especially like the Bryan Adams drabble -- it reads like lyrics to me. Liese, that was tough, but gorgeous. So raw and honest.

Here's my last-minute entry. A hundred words exactly, but it could be so much longer...

Challenge #53: One Year

It was going to be an adventure, we told four-year-old Jake. It was going to be all right, we told the cat, doped and swaying in his cage in the backseat. We told each other it wouldn’t have to be forever.

We left behind the traffic-choked highways and cheek-by-jowl neighborhoods of New Jersey for a whistle-stop town in northern Wyoming, and a house nestled against the county fairgrounds. The heavy scent of sugar beets hung in the air; gun racks took a place of honor in every truck. We were outsiders, not above suspicion.

We lasted there just one year.

Loving all the drabbles. Liese, that one was - ouch. I hope it helped you to write it out - I know it helps me.

I must confess, this entry was inspired by Amy's - in a sort of "exact opposite" kind of way.

One Year Contract

It was a one year contract. She would go to this tiny Northern town and exist for one year only, take the job for the money and the experience and then move back to the real world, the big city, where real people lived.

Except the summer nights were so long and light and had colours she had never seen before. She had not known rocks and water could be both harsh and haunting. The snow-covered landscape seen from the sky was foreign, but comforting. The winter nights were cold and long, but lit with magical hues dancing in the sky.

It was the realest place she had ever been. Eight years later, she is not sure she will ever leave.

Squeezing one in under the wire.....

June 30, 1812

The sage green dress brings out her eyes. Simple, high-necked, and long-sleeved, it’s only a morning dress. But not a mourning dress. At last.

One year. Passion and joy, a parting that broke her. Blood on her hands and a near-brush with death. A son whose origins she’ll conceal, so she can keep him by her and give him everything.

If she dreams nightly, if she doesn’t know which are worse, the nightmares or the ones that leave her shaking with need and raging at the emptiness of her bed, what of it? The year is over, and her life is before her.

Liese, you broke me. Everyone else is wonderful too. These drabbles are like little nuggets of gold.... or, around here, more like diamonds in the tiara!

Count me on the back of the topic train... I was bound and determined to not write something that was All About Me, and it took all week to find something else...

365 days, and just as many souls condemned. Every night, gentlemen request her services, and she makes her mark on the corner of a twenty. A tiny rubber stamp, a circle with “Cambios Andrea” and a dollar sign inside. She suggests a quiet drink, friendly place just around the corner. She picks up the check with his death warrant, and the bartender notes his face, the cut of his overcoat. Late that night, his final reward will come in a dark alley at knifepoint. He’s never found. You were hers only once, and she never bothered to know your name.

Ailleann, that was stone solid brilliant. Dayum.

And that's right, new topic day. After Teppy recovers from our bigass party in Cleveland this weekend...

Hi guys, sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to let Deb know I shot her am email.

t tiptoes back out