Unlocking Doors Quotes

I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.

Forgiveness is unlocking the door to set someone free and realising you were the prisoner!

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.

Your stepfather? I'd like to meet him." Oh no... why? "I'm not sure that's a good idea." Christian unlocks the door, his mouth in a grim line. "Are you ashamed of me?" "No!" It's my turn to sound exasperated. "Introduce you to my dad as what? 'This is the man who deflowered me and wants to start a BDSM relationship'. You're not wearing running shoes.

Does this mean you’re going to make love to me tonight, Christian?” Holy shit. Did I just say that? His mouth drops open slightly, but he recovers quickly. “No, Anastasia it doesn’t. Firstly, I don’t make love. I fuck… hard. Secondly, there’s a lot more paperwork to do, and thirdly, you don’t yet know what you’re in for. You could still run for the hills. Come, I want to show you my playroom.” My mouth drops open. Fuck hard! Holy shit, that sounds so… hot. But why are we looking at a playroom? I am mystified. “You want to play on your Xbox?” I ask. He laughs, loudly. “No, Anastasia, no Xbox, no Playstation. Come.”… Producing a key from his pocket, he unlocks yet another door and takes a deep breath. “You can leave anytime. The helicopter is on stand-by to take you whenever you want to go, you can stay the night and go home in the morning. It’s fine whatever you decide.” “Just open the damn door, Christian.” He opens the door and stands back to let me in. I gaze at him once more. I so want to know what’s in here. Taking a deep breath I walk in. And it feels like I’ve time-traveled back to the sixteenth century and the Spanish Inquisition. Holy fuck.

The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it -- made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

Avery worries about her, too, so Lissa's in good hands. Avery's pretty amazing." I gave him a scathing look. "Amazing? Do you like her or something?" I hadn't forgotten Avery's comment about leaving the door unlocked for him. "Of course I like her. She's a great person." "No, I mean like. Not like." "Oh, I see," he said, rolling his eyes. "We're dealing with elementary school definitions of 'like'.

Kisses open doors, I've noticed. That one gesture can unlock secrets, ease open feelings. It can't be prevented--these kisses just are. It's how they work. They break into basements you never knew you had.

Knowledge is the key that unlocks all the doors. You can be green-skinned with yellow polka dots and come from Mars, but if you have knowledge that people need instead of beating you, they'll beat a path to your door.

He's going macho again," Dev says, totally nonchalantly, while he unlocks the door. He's always going macho," Is adds. "It must be the wolf thing." I am not going macho. I am always macho," Nick says.

Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.

Unconditional love is like a country of two with no laws and no government. Which is all fine if everyone is peaceful and law abiding. In the wrong hands, though, you got looting and crime sprees, and let me tell you, the people who demand unconditional love are usually the ones who will rob and pillage and then blame you because you left your door unlocked.

Jem raised his hand, and his witchlight flared into life, frightening a group of blackbeetles. They scurried across the floor, causing Will to grimace. “Nice place to live, isn’t it? Let’s hope they left something behind other than filth. Forwarding addresses, a few severed limbs, a prostitute or two…” “Indeed. Perhaps, if we’re fortunate, we can still catch syphilis.” “Or demon pox,” Will suggested cheerfully, trying the door under the stairs. It swung open, unlocked as the front door had been. “There’s always demon pox.” “Demon pox does not exist.” “Oh ye of little faith,” said Will, disappearing into the darkness under the stairs.

The world gives us PLENTY of opportunities to strengthen our patience. While this truth can definitely be challenging, this is a good thing. Patience is a key that unlocks the door to a more fulfilling life. It is through a cultivation of patience that we become better parents, powerful teachers, great businessmen, good friends, and a live a happier life.

A little "thank you" that you will say to someone for a "little favour" shown to you is a key to unlock the doors that hide unseen "greater favours". Learn to say "thank you" and why not?

Relatedness and interaction between individuals may have lost their drive and liability. In our contemporary “brave new world", traditional trust or generous receptiveness has been replaced by ‘security devices’ and ‘safety gadgets’. (“Could we leave the door unlocked?”)

Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before.

You know Nana, I searched and searched, but could never find the key that unlocked the way. And now that I've stopped looking, I've finally found it. Maybe the door will open for me.

Seth hustled over. “What’s the password?” “Passwords are for sissies,” Warren’s muffled voice responded. “Works for me,” Seth said, unlocking the door and opening it.

Stop wasting your time looking for the key to happiness… the door is open and unlocked… just walk through it.

...This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath, the door of a vanished house left ajar...

Lost is not a hopeless place to be. It is a place of patience, of waiting. Lost does not mean gone for ever. Lost is a bridge between worlds, where the pain of our past can be transformed into power. You have always held the key to this special place, but now you are ready to unlock the door.

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.

If we find ourselves missing the art of living, we must suffer from a lack of fulfillment, joy, and meaning in life. By opening the closets of our minds, igniting the wicks of our curiosity, and unlocking the abandoned doors to our dormant passion, we revive an inspired and creative way of life. ("Waiting for Eureka")

This is what you do. If you feel low, you stand tall. You mess up, you move on. You want to try something, try it, and if it was a stupid thing to try, you look it in the eye. There's no turning back. You apologize if you're sorry, but know that the nimblest, strongest hands can't rebuild a bridge out of embers, so cut new wood. Start from scratch. You love with your whole heart. If you're jealous, talk yourself from the ledge. If you can't talk yourself down from the ledge, have a good time up there, looking down on the world. If you have to lie to make everything true again, lie like you mean it. If you find yourself in a cage, reach out through the bars for the key, unlock the door, and run away. If running away gets dangerous, run home. If home doesn't mean what it used to mean, decide what home will be in the future. If your best friend says she doesn't trust you, hold her jaw in your hand until it hurts, and make her face you. Thats all it takes. If you think you love a guy, see how his hand looks in yours, thats all it takes. If you get exiled into a new land, then go discover it. And if you feel like you're drowning, go swimming.

She walked to the rear door and took out a bobby pin from her pocket. Hugo watched as she fiddled with the pin inside the lock until it clicked and the door opened. "How did you learn to do that?" asked Hugo. "Books," answered Isabelle.

As people tend to ring-fence their privacy they become ever-more “incommunicado”, deliberately untouchable. By retreating in the secrecy of the safe haven of their living, their habitats become impregnable castles, with the draw-bridges of non-attendance always up. Adopting an attitude of "ghosting", constantly shamming ‘absence’, homes gradually become ghost houses and, extensively, communities grow into ghost towns. (“Could we leave the door unlocked?”)

As he unlocked his front door, he could hear the phone ringing. It took him a few moments to get in - the wooden frame had swollen with all the rainfall, and the door got gummed up sometimes - but when he got in, it was still ringing. Must be urgent , he thought, absent-mindedly. He shouted, “Padfoot? You in?” as he crossed the the room, then lifted the receiver, “Hello?” “Hello? Hello, Remus, is that you?” “Mary? Hi! I just got back - where the hell is everybody?!” There was a strange silence on the end of the phone, and a horrible static prickle ran down his spine. “Mary?!” “You haven’t heard…” “Jesus Christ, Mary, what?!” “Remus… something awful has happened.” She started explaining, and Remus fell to his knees as the whole world began to fall apart.

While we teeter on the tightrope between the present and the future, confronting the limits of our imagination, life may one day help us unsuspectedly unlock the secret door between urgent and substantial flows. If we have the knack of recognizing the discrepancy between pressure and loosening up, between hurry-scurry and meditation, we can create our own lane and avoid the pitfalls crowding our days. ("The unbearable heaviness of being" )

Is this your car?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “No. I thought I’d steal one and drive it into town. Think anyone will notice?” Graham reached across to unlock the passenger’s- side door, then pushed it open. “You wouldn’t know how to hotwire by any chance?

If Ella were a house, she would be a grand home, one with many rooms and doors, all of which were easily unlocked, flung open. If I were a house, I would be haunted.

Rejoice with glitters of ashes tonight Sparkling for moon's spiced silver bite Upon skin of darkness, loving night more Storm begins unlocking cold wind's door

One moment," she said, stealing toward the door. Carefully, she tested the doorknob. It was unlocked. She wrenched it open in a sudden rush of courage, only to promptly slam it shut again in Nathaniel's face. She had recalled, too late, that she was wearing only her shift. "I'm not decent," she explained, hugging her arms to her chest. "That's all right," he replied. "I hardly ever am, myself.

The guard said, 'Our orders are no one in or out.' 'You can tell the Prince that,' said Damen, 'after you tell him you let through the Regent's pet.' That got a flicker of reaction. Invoking Laurent's bad mood was like a magical key, unlocking the most forbidding doors.

Something like that. But you know, there's an upside here. Because when you spend so much time just intensely wanting something, and then you actually get the thing? It's magic.” All of a sudden, I feel like crying. In a good way. In the best way. Because I know exactly what she means. It's butterflies and haziness and heart eyes, but underneath all that, there's this bass line of I can't believe this. I can't believe this is me. I can't quite articulate the sweetness of that feeling. It's finding out the door you were banging on is finally unlocked. Maybe it was unlocked the whole time.

For those who die with honor, the touch of death is simply the unlocking of a door between this life and the next.

You are strong and independent, I told myself as I unlocked the door. Capable and clever. No males needed.

I tired the back door -- unlocked. Truley the Man Upstairs was smiling down on me.

I had my knife in hand before I realized I'd reached for it and had kicked open the...front door before it ever occurred to me that it might have already been unlocked.

Rolfe unlocked the door, muttering, “This had better be worth my time,” and stalked into the awaiting dimness beyond. Then stopped dead. Even in the watery light, Dorian could perfectly see the woman sitting at Rolfe’s desk, her black clothes dirty, weapons gleaming, and her feet propped on the dark wooden surface. Aelin Galathynius, her hands laced behind her head, grinned at them all and said, “I like this office far better thank your old one Rolfe.

I am trying to sleep on the front porch of forgiveness. I am too young to be this lonely. Still, do not mistake all of my honest open for empty. I didn’t leave the door of my love unlocked so you could mistake my sadness for a shelf. I do not have room to carry anyone’s chaos but my own. If I sink, it will be in my own ocean. If I float, it will be on the ship I built with my own hands.

I feel like I've been shut in a closet, and he's on the other side, and he doesn't have the key to unlock the door.

It hurts too much to break your own heart out of stupidity, to leave a door unlocked or a child untended and return to discover that whatever you value most has disappeared. No. You want to be intentional about the destruction. Be a witness. You want to watch how your life will shatter.

That joy in discovering that the right person at the right time can open all the windows and unlock all the doors.

. . .sometimes reading the same page over and over, until one sleepy afternoon something clicked, like a lock unlocking, and she saw those printed doors swing open on a vast house of words.

And Yarvi realized that Death does not bow to each person who passes her, does not sweep out her arm respectfully to show the way, speaks no profound words, unlocks no bolts. The key upon her chest is never needed, for the Last Door stands always open. She herds the dead through impatiently, needles of rank or fame or quality. She has an ever-lengthening queue to get through. A blind procession, inexhaustible.

Take this fucking thing off me!" he demanded. "Good morning to you too, Nick," Damian said mildly. He unlocked the door without haste and went to his office, Nick dogging his every footstep. "Did you --?" "I didn't touch it or myself. Take it off right now!" Nick said angrily. Damian sat down and motioned Nick closer. "We're going to have to have a talk about topping from the bottom. I don't allow that, pet.

. . . my obsession with gratefulness. I can't stop. Just now, I press the elevator button and am thankful that it arrives quickly. I get onto the elevator and am thankful that the elevator cable didn't snap and plummet me to the basement. I go to the fifth floor and am thankful that I didn't have to stop on the second or third or fourth floor. I get out and am thankful that Julie left the door unlocked so I don't have to rummage for my King Kong key ring. I walk in, and am thankful that Jasper is home and healthy and stuffing his face with pineapple wedges. And on and on. I'm actually muttering to myself, 'Thank you. . .thank you. . . thank you.' It's an odd way to live. But also kind of great and powerful. I've never before been so aware of the thousands of little good things, the thousands of things that go right every day.

At least I graduated," he muttered, stabbing the key in and unlocking the door. I sucked in a breath. "I think dying was a little out of my control, thank you very much." "If you say so". He shrugged, but I saw the corner of his mouth turn up into a faint smile.

I have told the story I was asked to tell. I have closed it, as so many stories close, with a joining of two people. What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the great revolutions of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species? A little thing. But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens. If you lose the key, the door may never be unlocked. It is in our bodies that we lose or begin our freedom, in our bodies that we accept or end our slavery. So I wrote this book for my friend, with whom I have lived and will die free.

The willingness to reach inside every part of yourself opens the door to total understanding. You place your entire identity on the line, not just an isolated part. This may sound daunting, but actually it’s the most natural way to approach any situation. When you hold some part of yourself in reserve you deny it exposure to life; you repress its energy and keep it form understanding what it needs to know.

Patience and persistence are the keys... The keys to unlock doors of success... With these two virtues, you grow in reasoning and experience.

If you start unlocking doors, you might find things you don’t want to see. Or worse, you might wake up.” “I’m not asleep,” Evander says, but heat prickles along his skin. “Whatever you say,” Laurie says.

You're still running." "He's right, you know." Kat stopped at the sound of the voice. Her hand was on the doorknob, freedom just inches away, but it was like she'd forgotten how to unlock a door when she turned around and saw Hale sitting alone at the top of the stairs.

The very quality of your life, whether you love it or hate it, is based upon how thankful you are toward God. It is one's attitude that determines whether life unfolds into a place of blessedness or wretchedness. Indeed, looking at the same rose bush, some people complain that the roses have thorns while others rejoice that some thorns come with roses. It all depends on your perspective. This is the only life you will have before you enter eternity. If you want to find joy, you must first find thankfulness. Indeed, the one who is thankful for even a little enjoys much. But the unappreciative soul is always miserable, always complaining. He lives outside the shelter of the Most High God. Perhaps the worst enemy we have is not the devil but our own tongue. James tells us, "The tongue is set among our members as that which . . . sets on fire the course of our life" (James 3:6). He goes on to say this fire is ignited by hell. Consider: with our own words we can enter the spirit of heaven or the agonies of hell! It is hell with its punishments, torments and misery that controls the life of the grumbler and complainer! Paul expands this thought in 1 Corinthians 10:10, where he reminds us of the Jews who "grumble[d] . . . and were destroyed by the destroyer." The fact is, every time we open up to grumbling and complaining, the quality of our life is reduced proportionally -- a destroyer is bringing our life to ruin! People often ask me, "What is the ruling demon over our church or city?" They expect me to answer with the ancient Aramaic or Phoenician name of a fallen angel. What I usually tell them is a lot more practical: one of the most pervasive evil influences over our nation is ingratitude! Do not minimize the strength and cunning of this enemy! Paul said that the Jews who grumbled and complained during their difficult circumstances were "destroyed by the destroyer." Who was this destroyer? If you insist on discerning an ancient world ruler, one of the most powerful spirits mentioned in the Bible is Abaddon, whose Greek name is Apollyon. It means "destroyer" (Rev. 9:11). Paul said the Jews were destroyed by this spirit. In other words, when we are complaining or unthankful, we open the door to the destroyer, Abaddon, the demon king over the abyss of hell! In the Presence of God Multitudes in our nation have become specialists in the "science of misery." They are experts -- moral accountants who can, in a moment, tally all the wrongs society has ever done to them or their group. I have never talked with one of these people who was happy, blessed or content about anything. They expect an imperfect world to treat them perfectly. Truly, there are people in this wounded country of ours who need special attention. However, most of us simply need to repent of ingratitude, for it is ingratitude itself that is keeping wounds alive! We simply need to forgive the wrongs of the past and become thankful for what we have in the present. The moment we become grateful, we actually begin to ascend spiritually into the presence of God. The psalmist wrote, "Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing. . . . Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations" (Psalm 100:2, 4-5). It does not matter what your circumstances are; the instant you begin to thank God, even though your situation has not changed, you begin to change. The key that unlocks the gates of heaven is a thankful heart. Entrance into the courts of God comes as you simply begin to praise the Lord.

Because it is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions inside the head and express something - perhaps not much, just something - of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are, from the momentary effect of the barometer to the force that created men distinct from trees. Something of the inaudible music that moves us along in our bodies from moment to moment like water in a river. Something of the spirit of the snowflake in the water of the river. Something of the duplicity and the relativity and the merely fleeting quality of all this. Something of the almighty importance of it and something of the utter meaninglessness. And when words can manage something of this, and manage it in a moment, of time, and in that same moment, make out of it all the vital signature of a human being - not of an atom, or of a geometrical diagram, or of a heap of lenses - but a human being, we call it poetry.

I didn't put in my diaphragm' I mumbled when we were through. You stirred, 'Is it dangerous?' 'It's very dangerous,' I said. Indeed, just about any stranger could have turned up nine months later. We might as well have left the door unlocked.

Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

What I didn't realize was how many doors the act of writing unlocks, as if my Dad's old fountain pen wasn't really a pen at all, but some strange variety of skeleton key.

I give this to you because it is the key that will unlock the door between your past and your future.

We all have doors inside us that should never be opened. God help us all when we find the keys to unlock them.

every hardship in life was a key to some greater understanding, and it was up to you if you chose to use it to unlock the future or bolt the door.

Suppose I were to give you a key ring [...] with a hundred keys, and I were to tell you that one of these keys will unlock it, this door we're imagining opening in onto all you want to be, as a player. How many of the keys would you be willing to try?' [...] 'Well I'd try every darn one,' Rader tells Lyle. [...] 'Then you are willing to make mistakes, you see. You are saying you will accept 99% error. The paralyzed perfectionist you say you are would stand there before that door. Jingling the keys. Afraid to try the first key.

In truth, the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits. Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. Thus, the first law I will obey, which precedeth all others is—I will form good habits and become their slave.

We lose keys and we find keys and we get new keys. We just have to find the ones that unlock the right doors. Sometimes, we have keys, but we don’t know what door they fit. That can be the hardest part, putting the right key in the right door.

I was shaking so hard, I could barely get the door unlocked. I just got the door shut behind me when I sank to my knees and fell apart. I cried so hard I was nearly convulsing. I had never felt such raw emotions in my life. I felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest and tore it to pieces. I curled into a ball on the floor and tried desperately to disappear. But no matter how small I got, I was still here. I still existed. And for a short while, I thought I had mattered to someone. I guess I was wrong. I mattered to no one.

The will to love, the desire to help, and an open mind with gratitude can unlock the door to eternal happiness.

Fear is a prison in which we place ourselves. You need only to press against the bars to realize that the door is always unlocked, and you are always free to leave.

OPIATE, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

My marriage to Jamie had been for me like the turning of a great key, each small turn setting in the intricate fall of tumblers within me. Bree had been able to turn that key as well, edging closer to the unlocking of the door of myself. But the final turn of the lock was frozen--until I had walked into the print shop in Edinburgh, and the mechanism had sprung free with a final, decisive click.

Just because someone is a keyholder, does not mean they will always help you unlock the door you want to go through – no matter how much you think you deserve to go through it. Sometimes you just have to reach out and take it.

You, Doctor Martin, walk from breakfast to madness. Late August, I speed through the antiseptic tunnel where the moving dead still talk of pushing their bones against the thrust of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel or the laughing bee on a stalk of death. We stand in broken lines and wait while they unlock the doors and count us at the frozen gates of dinner. The shibboleth is spoken and we move to gravy in our smock of smiles. We chew in rows, our plates scratch and whine like chalk in school. There are no knives for cutting your throat. I make moccasins all morning. At first my hands kept empty, unraveled for the lives they used to work. Now I learn to take them back, each angry finger that demands I mend what another will break tomorrow. Of course, I love you; you lean above the plastic sky, god of our block, prince of all the foxes. The breaking crowns are new that Jack wore. Your third eye moves among us and lights the separate boxes where we sleep or cry. What large children we are here. All over I grow most tall in the best ward. Your business is people, you call at the madhouse, an oracular eye in our nest. Out in the hall the intercom pages you. You twist in the pull of the foxy children who fall like floods of life in frost. And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself, counting this row and that row of moccasins waiting on the silent shelf.

To unlock the heavy outer door and to walk into the hushed interior, with the morning light spilling from the high windows on to the waiting books, gave her such pleasure that she would have worked for nothing.

Every closed door isn't locked and even if it is...YOU just might have the key! Search within to unlock a world of possibilities!

The right word at the right time will unlock the door to treasures - the wrong one will close it forever

That was why nights were so frightening. Without the distraction of light, the doors to other senses were unlocked.

Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure.

the faster it ran away from me. And I found myself reasoning that perhaps one more beer would unlock the doors of perception,

Books are keys that unlock the wisdom of yesterday and open the door to tomorrow

it is hard to find one’s calling because many mistakenly believe they need to look only within to discover their passion. Although it is true that we have innate interests and talents, we often do not know what they are until we have real-life experiences. Having a wide range of experiences can help you uncover your inner passion. Try various part-time jobs and internships, or volunteer. Don’t be afraid of rolling up your sleeves and diving in. While immersed in a job’s reality, you will discover whether it’s a good fit. Work experiences may unlock the door to a career opportunity you hadn’t considered. Third,

Forgiveness is the key which unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness. The forgiveness of Jesus not only takes away our sins, it makes them as if they had never been.

If I survived at all, it would be a triumph. If I swam, it would be a miracle. As I unlocked my door, I thought of my mother putting her age back fifteen years and going into the merchant marines. I had to try. If I ended in defeat, at least I would be trying. Trying to overcome was black people's honorable tradition.

I heard the bathroom door close and I kept my eyes screwed shut, but my heart skyrocketed into uncharted territories. I folded my arms around me and held my breath. There was the slightest movement behind me. Skin brushed against mine. A fine shiver rolled up my spine. An infinite spark transferred between us, something that couldn’t be replicated or forced. How could I’ve forgotten that when connected with Seth? My heart turned over heavily. Aiden brushed the mass of thick hair over one shoulder and his lips met the space between my neck and shoulder. His hands slid down the slick skin of my arms, cupping over my elbows and then to my wrists. Gently, slowly, he eased my arms to my sides. I bit down on my lip and my legs started trembling. But he was there. Like always, holding me up when I couldn’t stand on and letting me go when he knew I needed him to. He was more than just a shelter. AIden was my other half, my equal. And he needed no weird Apollyon connection. Aiden waited, still as a statue, patient as ever, until my muscles unlocked, one by one. Then his hands dropped to my waist and he turned me toward him. A heartbeat passed and he placed his fingers on my chin, tipping my head back. I opened my eyes, blinking the wetness off my lashes, and the air hitched in my throat. Faint, purplish bruises shadowed his jaw. There was a cut over the bridge of his nose. No doubt injuries I had given him.

From my locker I collected my sneakers, jock strap, and gym pants and then turned away, leaving the door ajar for the first time, forlornly open and abandoned, the locker unlocked. This was more final than the moment when the Headmaster handed me my diploma. My schooling was over now.

Your gift will unlock doors that you prayed for God to open.

Then I took a shower, unlocked the door, and set out on destroying myself.

Unlock the door or I’ll call a locksmith. You’re going to be comfortable in my home, goddammit.” Her mouth wobbles and she breaks into a laugh. “What is this? Aggressive southerning?

I feel that I am merely an agent, giving you some keys that have been given to me to pass on to you. These keys are to unlock doors out of your present prison. Doors opening onto new vistas. Doors beyond where you are now.

To Have Without Holding: Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch, to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can't do it, you say it's killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor's buttons blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced.

He says when your grandmother died your mother cried solidly for a week, solidly. She was crying with relief he says, it was like as if a door had been unlocked and she'd been let outside, she said to me I'm safe now. He waits, and he says this kid, when it's born, you mustn't ever let it think it's anything other than a gift and a blessing, do you hear me?

Mr. Ron, I was captive in the devil's prison. That was easy for Miss Debbie to see. But I got to tell you: Many folks had seen me behind the bars in that prison for more than thirty years, and they just walked on by. Kept their keys in their pocket and left me locked up. Now I ain't tryin to run them other folks down, 'cause I was not a nice fella-dangerous-and prob'ly just as happy to stay in prison. But Miss Debbie was different--she seen me behind them bars and reached way down in her pocket and pulled out the keys God gave her and used one to unlock the prison door and set me free.

Because I feel it. I feel the clicks and the turns and the creaking of a million keys unlocking a million doors in my mind. It's like I'm finally allowing myself to see what I really think, how I really feel, like I'm discovering my own secrets for the first time.

My phone rang and a duck quacked, so I answered the bird. Communication is key, and the only way to unlock The Door of Opportunity is with an axe and a Jack Nicholson grin.

Even locked doors can be unlocked in time.

Knowledge unlocks the door to the mysteries of our mistakes; wisdom guides us away from repeating them". HS/el

~Love is the master key that unlocks the door to eternal happiness~

I’ll leave the door unlocked. Be sure to ring the doorbell before you climb in through the window.

Often the simplest way to unlock a door is to knock upon it.

If you read a book, you will unlock unknown doors of your soul. And who knows; you can find a treasure inside…

Let your door stand open to receive Him, unlock your soul to Him, offer Him a welcome in your mind, and then you will see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, the joy of grace. Throw wide the gate of your heart, stand before the sun of the everlasting light...

It has been seven years since you died. Of course what I'll say next is that time has flown by. I got old. All of a sudden, de repente. I walk with difficulty. I even drool. I leave the door unlocked in case I die in my sleep, but it's more likely I'll go endlessly on until I get put away someplace. I am already dotty.... It's not so strange that I talk to my cat but I feel silly because he is totally deaf.

saying, I originally left the door unlocked as a matter of convenience. But pretty soon I realized that whenever the doorbell did ring, it was someone I didn’t know. So the bell became a signal that a stranger was at the door. I’ve learned never to answer it myself when that happens, because it’s likely to be a deputy sheriff wanting to serve me with some kind of paper, and of course I don’t need to be home for that.

In the future, he will rethink his unlocked-door policy. Though it had occurred to him that something might be stolen, he had never considered the possibility that something might be left.

Come on. Let’s go inside before you can be more of a twatwaffle tonight.” He burst out laughing. “What did you just call me?” “It’s one of Casey’s words.” “Hmm, let me guess. It’s probably one of Casey’s words for me?” She nodded as she unlocked the front door. “Yes, but with some stronger expletives along with it.” “I figured as much.

Perhaps, Yuan, such laws as this are only keys to unlock a door to a closed garden, and we must throw the key recklessly away and go forth into that garden boldly by imagination—or call it faith,

The front door is usually unlocked and there is no alarm system. They don't wear their seat belts in the car; they don't wear suntan lotion in the sun. They have decided nothing can kill them but God himself, and they don't even believe in him.

Do you feel trapped by the limitations in your life? Remember, you hold the key to the freedom you seek. You can unlock those limitations and set yourself free! There is always a way, there is always another open door or unlocked door. Try them all….

If she didn’t heal emotionally, if she could never endure a man’s touch… He wasn’t the key that could unlock that final door. There was much he could do, but not that. He wasn’t the key. Daemon Sadi was.

Unlock the door?' he asks. This family is an experiment, the biggest I've ever been part of, an experiment called: How do you let someone in? 'Unlock the door,' he says again. 'Please.' I release the lock. I open the door. That's the best definition of love.

She unlocked the door, and they walked through to the small backyard. It was fall, and two of their three fruit trees were in season: a Fuyu persimmon tree and a guava tree. “Sadie, do you see this? This is a persimmon tree! This is my favorite fruit.” Marx picked a fat orange persimmon from the tree, and he sat down on the now termite-free wooden deck, and he ate it, juice running down his chin. “Can you believe our luck?” Marx said. “We bought a house with a tree that has my actual favorite fruit.” Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met—he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn’t truly understood the nature of Marx’s good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know—were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard? He had certainly never mentioned persimmons before. My God, she thought, he is so easy to love. “Shouldn’t you wash that?” Sadie asked. “It’s our tree. Nothing’s touched it except my grimy hand,” Marx said. “What about the birds?” “I don’t fear the birds, Sadie. But you should have one of these.” Marx stood, and he picked another fruit for himself and one for her. He walked over to the hose at the side of the house, and he rinsed the persimmon. He held out the fruit to her. “Eat up, my love. Fuyus only yield every other year.” Sadie took a bite of the fruit. It was mildly sweet, its flesh somewhere between a peach and a cantaloupe. Maybe it was her favorite fruit, too?

All along the street, keys rattle in key-holes as each shop's ornate metal clothing is stripped away...It's as if, having unlocked the chastity of shutters and doors, they can't see the point in maintaining any shred of modesty.

I dug my hand into the small spot and pulled out a key attached to a big black key chain with buttons for locking and unlocking doors. My head jerked up to see his serious expression. Patti covered her mouth, saying nothing. “No more boys taking you on trips, you hear?” His voice was gravelly. “You can take your own self from now on. Last thing you need is some boy distracting you and making this whole situation even more complicated. Promise me you'll stay away from that son of Pharzuph.” “I tried that once, John,” Patti warned him. “It didn't work out so well for me.

Is this what you drive?” she asks, turning those wide eyes up to me. “Yes,” I say, but then I add with a smirk, “but you’re not surprised, are you? Isn’t this what bad-boys do? Ride motorcycles and break hearts?” Her smile is weak. “I suppose so.” She turns away and moves around to unlock the car door and pop the hood. I shouldn’t have said that.

At home he found the same threats waiting for him. He unlocked the door and stepped into the trap he had formed around him.

Don’t waste a good idea or allow it to die inside you. One idea can bring you to the top, make your day or spark off chains of success chain reactions.-

If someone insists they need to be in prison even though the door is unlocked, then I am not going to argue. They are free to stay in prison.

I found the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.

..:"Your greatest test, is when you are to bless someone else while you are going through your own storms." When what you have and need is the very thing someone else is in need of and you know deep down what's the right thing to do. That is the greatest challenge ever. But, that is also the greatest blessing and door of opportunity that comes camouflage knocking our door. That is the very key that will unlock the gates of Heaven over our lives if we just learn to listen, to be kind and to let go:..

We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab and you had no warning. It was the last time you were going to have Lake Tung Ting shrimp in that kinda shady Chinese restaurant and you had no idea. If you had known, perhaps you would have stepped behind the counter and shaken everyone's hand, pulled out the disposable camera and issued posing instructions. But you had no idea. There are unheralded tipping points, a certain number of times that we will unlock the front door of an apartment. At some point you were closer to the last time than you were to the first time, and you didn't even know it. You didn't know that each time you passed the threshold you were saying goodbye.

book A Place Called Lost the author believed that every hardship in life was a key to some greater understanding, and it was up to you if you chose to use it to unlock the future or bolt the door.

The life mission God gave you was only appointed to you. If you are faithful, God will send someone into your life to support it. If your are blessed, he will send someone who shares your passion. If you are chosen, he will unlock every door that stands in your way.

She was a worst-case scenarist on a grand scale. Because it was never just that the door was unlocked, it was that the door was unlocked, and men were inside, and they were waiting to rape and kill her.

Want my mouth between your legs? Want me to suck you off again and again?" His voice grew deep and husky, and she knew he was as affected by his graphic talk as she was. "I can tast you already. You're wet for me, aren't you? I'm going to bury my tongue in your pussy and eat you until my cock is ready to explode." He backed toward the house as she climbed out of the vehicle. "And then I'm going to flip you over and fuck you, long and hard." She growled low in her throat and stalked him, thinking she could pounce when he stopped to unlock the front door. Good thing they didn't have neighbors, because she was ripping off her top and he was rubbing his dick, and fuck, they'd had some intense sex over the last couple of years, but this was going to blow the lid off all those other times. "You want it, baby?" he murmured, as he jerked himself with long, tantalizing pulls. "You want this buried so deep you can taste it when I come?

He thought that the drugs we bought in the bus-depot restroom were intended to expand his mind, as though some door could be unlocked up there and he would greet his own genius—some glowing alien in glasses and sneakers, spinning planet Earth on its finger. Clark was an idiot.

But you know, there’s an upside here. Because when you spend so much time just intensely wanting something, and then you actually get the thing? It’s magic.” All of a sudden, I feel like crying. In a good way. In the best way. Because I know exactly what she means. It’s butterflies and haziness and heart eyes, but underneath all that, there’s this bass line of I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this is me. I can’t quite articulate the sweetness of that feeling. It’s finding out the door you were banging on is finally unlocked. Maybe it was unlocked the whole time.

I understand the temptation to draw an angry X through a whole season or a whole town or a whole relationship, to crumple it up and throw it away, to get it as far away as possible from a new life, a new future. But I think that’s both the easiest and the most cowardly choice. These days I’m walking over and retrieving those years from the trash, erasing the X, unlocking the door. It’s the only way that darkness turns to light.

Really? You didn’t see me?” Bria pushed the door open, her head turned toward a departing Zorn. “You didn’t notice me coming up the walkway before you shut the door in my face? Oh yeah, keep walking. See how that works out for you tonight. Those handcuffs aren’t going to unlock themselves.

I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table, and it would never even have crossed a kid's mind to tell an adult to fuck off. There was plenty of bad there, I don't forget that, but we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn't break the rules lightly. If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this: people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbors, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero. Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus, and it's spreading. Watch the packs of kids roaming inner-city estates, mindless and brakeless as baboons, looking for something or someone to wreck. Watch the businessmen shoving past pregnant women for a seat on the train, using their 4x4s to force smaller cars out of their way, purple-faced and outraged when the world dares to contradict them. Watch the teenagers throw screaming stamping tantrums when, for once, they can't have it the second they want it. Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone.

I long for those tranquil moments of absolute nothing. And I think the reason I really like them is because the moment the world goes mute, my brain seems to open like a flower in the spring. I actually can feel little inner doors unlocking.

Great names come and go, but the name of Jesus remains. The devil still hates it, the world still opposes it, but God still blesses it and we can still claim it! “In the name of Jesus” is the key that unlocks the door of prayer and the treasury of God’s grace. It’s the weapon that defeats the enemy and the motivation that compels our sacrifice and service. It’s the name that causes our hearts to rejoice and our lips to sing his praise.

It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then is he caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals.

I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity . . . of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Gratitude is the key to unlocking the door to abundance.

Even locked doors can be unlocked in time.

I struggle with my life because instead of just doing what needs to be done, I fight the underlying fear; I try to unlock the door. Paradoxically, the only way to unlock the door is to forget the door. Instead of obsessing about the locked door, we need to be going about our lives, which means cleaning up the house, taking care of the baby, going to work, whatever.

Hey,” Alex says. Henry turns back to him, his eyes silver in the wash of the streetlight. “We won.” Henry takes his hand, one corner of his mouth tugging gently upward. “Yeah. We won.” Alex reaches down into the front of his dress shirt and finds the chain with his fingers, pulls it out carefully. The ring, the key. Under winter clouds, victorious, he unlocks the door.

hurts too much to break your own heart out of stupidity, to leave a door unlocked or a child untended and return to discover that whatever you value most has disappeared. No. You want to be intentional about the destruction. Be a witness. You want to watch how your life will shatter.

Mary was like a caged tiger in the first days of her captivity. Keen, alert, and watchful, she listened tensely each dawn for the key that unlocked her door. After breakfast she watched the road for messengers, pacing back and forth like a confined feline. But no messengers ever came. Elizabeth had abandoned her. Or forgotten her. And the days passed. Little by little, the Queen of Scots grew accustomed to her captivity. She no longer heard the key in the lock, or the footsteps outside her door. More often than not it was the maid's cheerful voice that woke her, along with the hand on Mary's shoulder and the delicious smells wafting from the breakfast tray.

With tire Master-Key in his possession, the student may unlock the many doors of the mental and psychic temple of knowledge, and enter the same freely and intelligently. This Principle explains the true nature of "Energy," "Power," and "Matter," and why and how all these are subordinate to the Mastery of Mind.

I scooted out of the laundry room and skipped down the hallway, arms flaying around my head like one of the hot pink puppets from the movie Labyrinth. “A scent and a sound, I’m lost and I’m found. And I’m hungry like the wolf. Something on a line, it’s discord and rhyme—whatever, whatever, la la la—Mouth is alive, all running inside, and I’m hungry like the—” Warmth spread down my neck. “It’s actually, ‘I howl and I whine. I’m after you,’ and not blah or whatever.” Startled by the deep voice, I shrieked and whipped around. My foot slipped on a section of well-cleaned wood and my butt smacked on the floor. “Holy crap,” I gasped, clutching my chest. “I think I’m having a heart attack.” “And I think you broke your butt.” Laughter filled Daemon’s voice. I remained sprawled across the narrow hallway, trying to catch my breath. “What the hell? Do you just walk into people’s houses?” “And listen to girls absolutely destroy a song in a matter of seconds? Well, yes, I make a habit out of it. Actually, I knocked several times, but I heard your…singing, and your door was unlocked.” He shrugged. “So I just let myself in.” “I can see that.” I stood, wincing. “Oh, man, maybe I did break my butt.” “I hope not. I’m kind of partial to your butt.” He flashed a smile. “Your face is pretty red. You sure you didn’t smack that on the way down?” I groaned. “I hate you.

sudden I stopped. I was out of breath. I asked myself, “What is this all about? What is the meaning of this ceaseless rush? This is ridiculous!” Then I declared independence, and said, “I do not care if I go to dinner. I do not care whether I make a talk. I do not have to go to this dinner and I do not have to make a speech.” So deliberately and slowly I walked back to my room and took my time about unlocking the door. I telephoned the man downstairs and said, “If you want to eat, go ahead. If you want to save a place for me, I will be down after a while, but I am not going to rush any more.” So I removed my coat, sat down, took off my shoes, put my feet up on the table, and just sat. Then I opened the Bible and very slowly read aloud the 121st Psalm, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.” I closed the book and had a little talk with myself, saying, “Come on now, start living a slower and more relaxed life,” and then I affirmed, “God is here and His

Something that once had importance might be forgotten by most people but because millions of people once knew it, a force is present that can be harnessed. There might be so much significance attached to a song, for example, or a fact, that it can’t die but only lies dormant, like a vampire in his coffin, waiting to be called forth from the grave once again. There is more magic in the fact that the first mass worldwide photo of the Church of Satan was taken by Joe Rosenthal – the same man who took the most famous news photo in history – the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. There’s real occult significance to that – much more than in memorizing grimoires and witches’ alphabets. People ask me about what music to use in rituals – what is the best occult music. I’ve instructed people to go to the most uncrowded section of the music store and it’s a guarantee what you’ll find there will be occult music. That’s the power of long-lost trivia. I get irritated by people who turn up their noses and whine ‘Why would anyone want to know that?’ Because once upon a time, everyone in America knew it. Suppose there’s a repository of neglected energy, that’s been generated and forgotten. Maybe it’s like a pressure cooker all this time, just waiting for someone to trigger its release. ‘Here I am,’ it beckons, ‘I have all this energy stored up just waiting for you – all you have to do is unlock the door. Because of man’s stupidity, he’s neglected me to this state of somnambulism – dreaming the ancient dreams – even though I was once so important to him.’ Think about that. A song that was once on millions of lips now is only on your lips. Now what does that contain? Those vibrations of that particular tune, what do they evoke, call up? What do they unlock? The old gods lie dormant, waiting.

And suddenly she was so strange he couldn’t believe he knew her at all. He was in someone else’s house, like those other jokes people told of the gentleman, drunk, coming home late late at night, unlocking the wrong door, entering a wrong room, and bedding with a stranger and getting up early and going to work and neither of them the wiser.

This intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. When given free rein, his imagination played with past events, often not important ones, but minor happenings and trifling things. His nostalgic memory glorified them and they assumed a strange character. Their world and their existence seemed very distant and the spirit reached out for them longingly: In my mind I took bus rides, unlocked the front door of my apartment, answered my telephone, switched on the electric lights. Our thoughts often centered on such details, and these memories could move one to tears.

Although drinking to the point of becoming incapacitated is unwise and risky for anyone, the blame for rape must be put on the rapist who preys on a drunk woman, not a drunk woman who becomes prey. If my car is stolen after I’ve parked it with the door unlocked in a neighborhood known for car theft, a crime has been committed, and I have the right and expectation to report the crime to the police. No one would tell me that the thief is the one who deserves sympathy, and that apprehending him would ruin his life. No one would tell me I’m a terrible person for getting my car stolen, and that I deserve to have my car stolen. They would be right to question my judgment, but not the fact that a crime has been committed. But when it comes to rape, the victim’s pre-rape actions are used to justify the crime.

The skeleton key unlocks the mind and swings open the door of imagination. A far better place than here A much safer place than there The quintessential somewhere The mystical nowhere The enigmatic anywhere My gift to you - the key to everywhere. The mortal will find itself lost while the soul always knows the way it is grateful for the darkness and celebrates the day I can give you peace my peace I give you... but I cannot be your savior or your god - I cannot be the light along your path - I can only give you the lamp and point the way. The blind will see... the deaf will hear... but those who choose reason will never understand. Woe to the ones who think they know the answers they will cease to ask the questions that may be their own salvation. We possess the knowledge of the Universe from conception. Once born we are taught to forget. If we cannot look out at our world and see our children's vision then we are truly blind we are unable to lead them to paradise. "Even people who are in the dark search for their shadows. Shadows exist only if there is light. We will never find total darkness - not even in death... ...and we always cast a shadow no matter how overcast our skies become. You are never alone." Do not listen to the voice that shouts to you from behind desks behind podiums behind altars. Do not pay attention to the orators and the opportunists. Do not be distracted by the promises made behind masks. Listen to the quiet. Listen to the whispers as they gently guide you through the assaults of man's absurdities. Listen to the gentle breathing of your mother and lay your head to rest in her peace and in her warm embrace and understand that truth and power lie within you. Breathe silence. The free bird will always return to the cage sooner or later to seek food and water and the loving hand of it's caretaker.

Gratitude is a key that unlocks the door to a joyful spirit. When days go by without gratefulness, the door can feel stuck, causing an emptiness inside. The door becomes un-wedged and reopens once you re-focus on what you are grateful for. If you have draining days, reach deep within your heart and reintroduce gratitude to refill your spirit with joy.

A change in direction was required. The story you finished was perhaps never the one you began. Yes! He would take charge of his life anew, binding his breaking selves together. Those changes in himself that he sought, he himself would initiate and make them. No more of this miasmic, absent drift. How had he ever persuaded himself that his money-mad burg would rescue him all by itself, this Gotham in which Jokers and Penguins were running riot with no Batman (or even Robin) to frustrate their schemes, this Metropolis built of Kryptonite in which no Superman dared set foot, where wealth was mistaken for riches and the joy of possession for happiness, where people lived such polished lives that the great rough truths of raw existence had been rubbed and buffed away, and in which human souls had wandered so separately for so long that they barely remembered how to touch; this city whose fabled electricity powered the electric fences that were being erected between men and men, and men and women, too? Rome did not fall because her armies weakened but because Romans forgot what being Roman meant. Might this new Rome actually be more provincial than its provinces; might these new Romans have forgotten what and how to value, or had they never known? Were all empires so undeserving, or was this one particularly crass? Was nobody in all this bustling endeavor and material plenitude engaged, any longer, on the deep quarry-work of the mind and heart? O Dream-America, was civilization's quest to end in obesity and trivia, at Roy Rogers and Planet Hollywood, in USA Today and on E!; or in million-dollar-game-show greed or fly-on-the-wall voyeurism; or in the eternal confessional booth of Ricki and Oprah and Jerry, whose guests murdered each other after the show; or in a spurt of gross-out dumb-and-dumber comedies designed for young people who sat in darkness howling their ignorance at the silver screen; or even at the unattainable tables of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Alain Ducasse? What of the search for the hidden keys that unlock the doors of exaltation? Who demolished the City on the Hill and put in its place a row of electric chairs, those dealers in death's democracy, where everyone, the innocent, the mentally deficient, the guilty, could come to die side by side? Who paved Paradise and put up a parking lot? Who settled for George W. Gush's boredom and Al Bore's gush? Who let Charlton Heston out of his cage and then asked why children were getting shot? What, America, of the Grail? O ye Yankee Galahads, ye Hoosier Lancelots, O Parsifals of the stockyards, what of the Table Round? He felt a flood bursting in him and did not hold back. Yes, it had seduced him, America; yes, its brilliance aroused him, and its vast potency too, and he was compromised by this seduction. What he opposed in it he must also attack in himself. It made him want what it promised and eternally withheld. Everyone was an American now, or at least Americanized: Indians, Uzbeks, Japanese, Lilliputians, all. America was the world's playing field, its rule book, umpire, and ball. Even anti-Americanism was Americanism in disguise, conceding, as it did, that America was the only game in town and the matter of America the only business at hand; and so, like everyone, Malik Solanka now walked its high corridors cap in hand, a supplicant at its feast; but that did not mean he could not look it in the eye. Arthur had fallen, Excalibur was lost and dark Mordred was king. Beside him on the throne of Camelot sat the queen, his sister, the witch Morgan le Fay.

Freedom is a lifetime practice—a choice we get to make again and again each day. Ultimately, freedom requires hope, which I define in two ways: the awareness that suffering, however terrible, is temporary; and the curiosity to discover what happens next. Hope allows us to live in the present instead of the past, and to unlock the doors of our mental prisons.

Deep down I know, of course, that I no longer need to lose myself in fantasy because I’m living life at last. But I’ll always be thankful for my imagination because I learned long ago that it was my greatest gift: it was the key that unlocked my prison and allowed me to escape, the door through which I entered new worlds and conquered them—the place where I was free.

and started to unlock the door. On the other side of the door, a bunch of voices started talking at the same time. “What the—?” “Oh God, it’s late! We’re behind schedule!” “We gotta hide the—!” “Stall them! Stall them!” I don’t know about you, but that sounded like a burglary in progress to me. Gabi and I traded looks. “Who’s in your house?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said.

Attention words. A single word wasn't enough. Not even for a particular segment. The brain had defenses, filters evolved over millions of years to protect against manipulation. The first was perception, the process of funneling an ocean of sensory input down to a few key data packages worthy of study by the cerebral cortex. When data got by the perception filter, it received attention. And she saw now that it must be like that all the way down: There must be words to attack each filter. Attention words and then maybe desire words and logic words and urgency words and command words. This was what they were teaching her. How to craft a string of words that would disable the filters one by one, unlocking each mental tumbler until the mind's last door swung open.

Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hate. Forgiveness breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness. While dying on the cross, Jesus said, “Forgive them” — the Roman soldiers, the religious leaders, his disciples who had fled in darkness, even you and me who have denied him so many times — “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

The Last Invocation At the last, tenderly, From the walls of the powerful, fortress’d house, From the clasp of the knitted locks—from the keep of the well-closed doors, Let me be wafted. Let me glide noiselessly forth; With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper, Set ope the doors, O Soul! Tenderly! be not impatient! (Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh! Strong is your hold, O love.)

I think that the process of giving your true love to someone, mainly surrounds the act of opening a door inside that's all locked up. Behind that door lives the small child that is the real you. The small child who hurts too much and feels too much and laughs too loud and always believes... true love involves unlocking the many padlocks on that door, taking her by the hand, and guiding her to the arms of the one you've chosen to love. And I think this is why some people change forever... because they loved someone in this way, but it only hurt too much. The little one was wounded. So this is why you take her back and tell her she's better off staying inside. It is a poetic, lyrical tragedy. Some people die this way, before they ever are dead. Or maybe we don't die; maybe we live on, behind that door.

Then she would drive to the pawnshop, dig up the doors from where they were hidden, and replace them unlocked at the front just in time for opening time, which was the moment her gut told her the shop should be open. She would sit there all day, doing what she did and no more than what she did, and then she would stop doing that and go home. There wasn't much else to it, life. A person's life is only what they do.

To have without holding Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch ; to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can’t do it, you say it’s killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced.

Sometimes, I guess, an over-valent idea enters the mind as a problem, or imaginary problem. This is not so rare. You are getting ready for bed, late at night, and all of a sudden the idea comes into your mind that you did not shut off your car lights. You look out the window at your car-which is parked in your driveway in plain sight-and you can see that it shows no lights. But then you think: Maybe I left the lights on and they stayed on so long that they ran the battery down. So to be sure, I must go out and check. You put on your robe and go out, unlock the car door, get in and pull on the headlight switch. The lights come on. You turn them off, get out, lock up the car and return to the house. What has happened is that you have gone crazy; you have become psychotic. Because you have discounted the testimony of your senses; you could see out the window that the car lights were not on, yet you went out to check anyhow. This is the cardinal factor: you saw but you did not believe. Or, conversely, you did not see something but you believed it anyhow. Theoretically, you could travel between your bedroom and the car forever, trapped in an eternal closed loop of unlocking the car, trying the light switch, returning to the house-in this regard you herewith are a machine. You are no longer human.

Neil said nothing. Andrew hooked his fingers in the collar of Neil's shirt and tugged just enough for Neil to feel it. "I know what I'm doing. I knew what I was agreeing to when I took Kevin's side. I knew what it could cost us and how far I'd have to go. Understand? You aren't going anywhere. You're staying here." Andrew didn't let go until Neil nodded, and then he reached for Neil's hand. He took his cigarette back, put it between his lips, and pressed a warm key into Neil's empty palm. Neil lifted his hand to look at it. The hardware logo engraved in it meant it was a copy. To what, Neil didn't know, but it only took him a moment to figure it out. Andrew used this key to unlock the front door and then took it off the ring on the porch. Now he was giving it to Neil. "Get some sleep," Andrew said. "We're going home tomorrow. We'll figure this out then." Andrew went around Neil to the front door. He had no sympathy or comfort for his family as they grieved Seth's unexpected death, but he would keep watch on them from the doorway until they were okay again. It was harder than it should have been for Neil to look away from him, but he finally set off down the hall.

When I left high school with my diploma, it felt like I was holding a key that would unlock the door to a better world. Every teacher I passed on my way down to the parking lot—the ones who suspended me for questioning them both earnestly and in jest, suspended me for using a contumacious hip-shake as my hallway gait, suspended me for me being me—the ones who would roll their eyes if my behavior was, on the whole, unpatriotic, unjustified, and immature—well, on the way down that long black declivity, their faces seemed so contorted as if lurking shadows had vice grips locked on their kidneys, wrenching it every time a teacher didn't want to remain upright and respectful. Yes, they didn’t want to me to succeed either! I pledge allegiance to the flag that united every authority in that indefensible school looked at me, even treated me, as if I was a terrorist, or at the very least, unpatriotic. But God—didn’t the red blood, white skin, and blue balls that flagged my physical existence suffice for me to have a little liberty and justice?

named her restaurant Magic Cafe. But that had been when she was young and still foolishly believed in all that nonsense. A lone blue heron flew past her. She watched as it flapped its wings in a rhythmic motion, continuing down the beach until she lost it in the distance. The breeze tossed her gray-sprinkled hair this way and that. The gray she never considered coloring back to its original chestnut brown, there was no time for such frivolities. She glanced at her watch. It was time to head back to the cafe. It might not open until eleven, but she had a ton of work to do each morning before she unlocked the doors. Plus, this was her monthly get-together with her friends Susan and Julie, a date that was never broken. Her friends would come by for

There was a muffled tap again, and I heard a familiar voice whisper faintly, “Kelsey, it’s me.” I unlocked the door and peeked out. Ren was standing there dressed in his white clothes, barefoot, with a triumphant grin on his face. I pulled him inside and hissed out thickly, “What are you doing here? It’s dangerous coming into town! You could have been seen, and they’d send hunters out after you!” He shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “I missed you.” My mouth quirked up in a half smile. “I missed you too.” He leaned a shoulder nonchalantly against the doorframe. “Does that mean you’ll let me stay here? I’ll sleep on the floor and leave before daylight. No one will see me. I promise.” I let out a deep breath. “Okay, but promise you’ll leave early. I don’t like you risking yourself like this.” “I promise.” He sat down on the bed, took my hand, and pulled me down to sit beside him. “I don’t like sleeping in the dark jungle by myself.” “I wouldn’t either.” He looked down at our entwined hands. “When I’m with you, I feel like a man again. When I’m out there all alone, I feel like a beast, an animal.” His eyes darted up to mine. I squeezed his hand. “I understand. It’s fine. Really.” He grinned. “You were hard to track, you know. Lucky for me you two decided to walk to dinner, so I could follow your scent right to your door.” Something on the nightstand caught his attention. Leaning around me, he reached over and picked up my open journal. I had drawn a new picture of a tiger-my tiger. My circus drawings were okay, but this latest one was more personal and full of life. Ren stared at it for a moment while a bright crimson flush colored my cheeks. He traced the tiger with his finger, and then whispered gently, "Someday, I'll give you a portrait of the real me." Setting the journal down carefully, he took both of my hands in his, turned to me with an intense expression, and said, "I don't want you to see only a tiger when you look at me. I want you to see me. The man." Reaching out, he almost touched my cheek but he stopped and withdrew his hand. "I've worn the tiger's face for far too many years. He's stolen my humanity." I nodded while he squeezed my hands and whispered quietly, "Kells, I don't want to be him anymore. I want to be me. I want to have a life." "I know," I said softly. I reached up to stroke his cheek. "Ren, I-" I froze in place as he pulled my hand slowly down to his lips and kissed my palm. My hand tingled. His blue eyes searched my face desperately, wanting, needing something from me. I wanted to say something to reassure him. I wanted to offer him comfort. I just couldn't frame the words. His supplication stirred me. I felt a deep bond with him, a strong connection. I wanted to help him, I wanted to be his friend, and I wanted...maybe something more. I tried to identify and categorize my reactions to him. What I felt for him seemed too complicated to define, but it soon became obvious to me that the strongest emotion I felt, the one that was stirring my heart, was...love.

You were as much in prison as anyone I knew there, Colin. Only you created it for yourself. Your father paced out the cell and your brothers fit the bars and you turned the key in the lock and buried it somewhere only you know. And you stared at Daniel through the bars and cursed him for being able to walk out the door. But he’s not the one who did something wrong. All he did was save himself. And you can too. But you have to find that key and unlock the door.

The function of my comedy is not to provide answers, but to postulate questions, impertinent questions and therefore finally, pertinent questions. Not to open doors, merely to unlock them. To not invade the boundaries of probability but stabd a cool guard this side of the boundaries. Somewhere between there's a thesis. To pump up the muscle of dialectic (or in my case Di-Eclectic!) against the brawn of surrealistic solution. I play not Hamlet, but the second gravedigger, not Lear but the fool.

A Big Ol’ Cry. Anyone who says “Crying doesn’t solve anything” doesn’t know the difference between dealing with the stress and dealing with the situation that causes the stress. Have you had the experience of just barely making it inside before you slam the door behind you and burst into tears for ten minutes? Then you wipe your nose, sigh a big sigh, and feel relieved from the weight of whatever made you cry? You may not have changed the situation that caused the stress, but you completed the cycle.

I unlocked the door and entered the familiar assortment of shadows. It was uncomfortably cool, almost like winter. The carpeting felt damp. It actually smelled like winter. Which was funny, since I hadn’t noticed it outside. Does that mean the smell was inside my apartment? When the temperature and intensity of the sunlight and the quality of night all met certain criteria, did that smell issue from the books and clothes and curtains and the other nooks and crannies all at once? Remembering something.

I’m glad you could make it,” she quipped, her voice not quite as steady as she wished. “When you issue an invitation to your bedroom, it’s common practice to make sure the door is unlocked,” he returned without a pause. He looked beyond her and said, “It’s also common to wait until your partner’s here before you start getting the sheets hot.” [...] “Sorry,” she quipped lightly, “I’m not familiar with the etiquette required of a mistress. Next time I’ll make sure that you’re in the bed before I throw hot coals at it.

/A weekend toward the end of September, the bell above the door rang and there he was in the shop. Same old feeling in my guts. I’ll go if you want me to, he said. I smiled, I was so fucking happy to see him. You’ve only just got here, you twat, I said. Now give us a hand with this, and he took the other end of the trestle table and moved it over to the wall. Pub? I said. He grinned. And before I could say anything else he put his arms around me. And everything he couldn’t say in our room in France was said in that moment. I know, I said. I know. I’d already accepted I wasn’t the key to unlock him. She’d come later. It took a while to acknowledge the repercussions of that time. How the numbness in my fingertips traveled to my heart and I never even knew it. I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I’d no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross. The psychiatrist liked that analogy. I watched him write it down. Chuckle, chuckle, his pen across the page.

We reached the doors and Jackaby inspected the lock. “It isn’t broken,” he said. “It’s unlocked. From the outside. Wait here.” He stalked down the steps and returned a minute later holding the sky iron chain. It had been sliced into pieces. “The bad news is, she’s gone,” he said. “And worse, she has the black blade.” “Is there good news?” Miss Lee asked. “Well,” Jackaby answered gamely, “karmically, I would say we’re due for an upswing on the pendulum of fortune. That’s almost good news.” “That’s not good news,” Serif said, crossly. “That’s just a very wordy way of saying it’s all bad news.

So here is what I see when we reclaim the church ladies: a woman loved and free is beautiful. She is laughing with her sisters, and together they are telling their stories, revealing their scars and their wounds, the places where they don't have it figured out. They are nurturers, creating a haven where the young, the broken, the tenderhearted, and the at-risk can flourish. These women are dancing and worshiping, hands high, faces tipped toward heaven, tears streaming. They are celebrating all shapes and sizes, talking frankly and respectfully about sexuality and body image, promising to stop calling themselves fat. They are saving babies tossed in rubbish heaps, rescuing child soldiers, supporting mamas trying to make ends meet halfway around the world, thinking of justice when they buy their daily coffee. They are fighting sex trafficking. They are pastoring and counseling. They are choosing life consistently, building hope, doing the hard work of transformation in themselves. They are shaking off the silence of shame and throwing open the prison doors of physical and sexual abuse, addictions, eating disorders, and suicidal depression. Poverty and despair are being unlocked - these women know there are many hands helping turn that key. There isn't much complaining about husbands and chores, cattiness, or jealousy when a woman knows she is loved for her true self. She is lit up with something bigger than what the world offers, refusing to be intimidated into silence or despair.

It’s the only unique building on the isle, painted twenty different colors with topsy-turvy architecture and a sign that reads SLURPS AND BURPS: YOUR MERRY APOTHECARY. The door also belches when people enter or exit. And the inside of the store is a veritable maze of shelves filled with colorful vials in all different shapes and sizes, labeled with names like Fuzzy Fizz and Hush Slush. It also tends to smell of burning hair or dirty feet or some other strange byproduct of Kesler’s constant experiments—and all of this “quirkiness” is intentional. Kesler has made it abundantly clear that he designed the store specifically to make “the stuffy nobles” uncomfortable.

about his origins from the holographic ghost of his own long-dead father. But now I was thinking of a young Jedi-in-training named Luke Skywalker, looking into the mouth of that cave on Dagobah while Master Yoda told him about today’s activity lesson: Strong with the Dark Side of the Force that place is. In you must go, mofo. So in I went. When I unlocked the front door of our house and stepped into the living room, Muffit, our ancient beagle, glanced up at me sleepily from where he was stretched out on the rug. A few years earlier he would have been waiting for me just inside the door, yapping like a madman. But the poor guy had now grown so old and deaf that my arrival barely

Priss tried to open her door, but it still didn’t budge. “Unlock it.” Instead he pulled her around to face him. He started to blast her, but something funny happening. Instead of reading her the riot act, he stared into her eyes, then down at her mouth. His entire demeanor changed. He looked just as tense, but now for different, hotter reasons. He still stared intently at her mouth when Priss heard the lock click open. She glanced down and saw that Trace had reached back for the door, all without breaking that disturbing, electrifying visual contact with her. She met his gaze again, and softened. Damn, but resisting Trace wouldn’t be easy, not if he kept looking at her like that. “You’re coming in, too?” “Yes.” Suddenly, almost violently, he turned away from her and left the car. Still a gentleman, he strode around to her side and opened her door. “Let’s get this night over with.” Well. That sounded insulting.

In every way there is, murder is chaos. Our job is simple, when you get down to it: we stand against that, for order. I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table, and it would never even have crossed a kid’s mind to tell an adult to fuck off. There was plenty of bad there, I don’t forget that, but we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn’t break the rules lightly. If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this: people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbors, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero. Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus, and it’s spreading. Watch the packs of kids roaming inner-city estates, mindless and brakeless as baboons, looking for something or someone to wreck. Watch the businessmen shoving past pregnant women for a seat on the train, using their 4x4s to force smaller cars out of their way, purple-faced and outraged when the world dares to contradict them. Watch the teenagers throw screaming stamping tantrums when, for once, they can’t have it the second they want it. Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone. The final step into feral is murder.

And the money came rolling into the pockets of the two greedy aunts. But while all this excitement was going on outside, poor James was forced to stay locked in his bedroom, peeping through the bars of his window at the crowds below. “The disgusting little brute will only get in everyone’s way if we let him wander about,” Aunt Spiker had said early that morning. “Oh, please!” he had begged. “I haven’t met any other children for years and years and there are going to be lots of them down there for me to play with. And perhaps I could help you with the tickets.” “Cut it out!” Aunt Sponge had snapped. “Your Aunt Spiker and I are about to become millionaires, and the last thing we want is the likes of you messing things up and getting in the way.” Later, when the evening of the first day came and the people had all gone home, the aunts unlocked James’s door and ordered him to go outside and pick up all the banana skins and orange peel and bits of paper that the crowd had left behind. “Could I please have something to eat first?” he asked. “I haven’t had a thing all day.” “No!” they shouted, kicking him out the door. “We’re too busy to make food! We are counting our money!

They walked to the doors, and she unlocked them. Before she could say anything, I began the show. "Garrett! Oh, my God!" I rushed forward and threw my arms around him. "What happened? Who did this?" "I was mugged." "Do we say mugged in Albuquerque?" He glared at me. "I'm so sorry. I'll take you to the hospital." Disappointment lined the guard's face. But it quickly transformed into confusion. "Wait, I thought you said your name was Reyes. Reyes Farrow." After I gaped at him for an eternity, an eternity in which he struggled to conceal [a] mischievous grin, I turned back to her. "It is. It's Reyes Garrett Farrow. Not Reyes Alexander Farrow." I snorted and waved a dismissive hand. "That's another guy altogether." She wrinkled her forehead in suspicion. "Gotta go," I said, hurrying him along. "Have to get this man to a hospital for multiple stab wounds." "He was stabbed?" she asked with a concerned gasp. "Not yet, but the night is young.

Kylo had rummaged through these hopes and fears, things he had no right to. But as he searched, something had changed. Even as he callously rifled through her mind, he had somehow revealed his own. Rey found herself in his mind even as he invaded hers. She felt his rage, like a ruinous storm that filled his head, and his hatred, and his lust to dominate and humiliate those who wronged him. But she also felt his hurt, and his loneliness. And his fear -- that he would never prove as strong as Darth Vader, the ghost who haunted his dreams. Kylo had retreated at finding Rey in his head -- had practically fled from her. But that had not been the end of that strange, sudden connection. She had seen more -- far more. Somehow, almost instinctually, she knew how he accessed some of the powers at his command -- even though she didn't understand them. It was as if his training had become hers, unlocking and flinging open door after door in her mind. But now Rey couldn't shut those doors -- and she feared what had been set loose. Kylo had urged her to let him be her teacher -- had pleaded with her, almost.

For Woman, in her weakness, is yet the strongest force upon the earth. She is the helm of all things human; she comes in many shapes and knocks at many doors; she is quick and patient, and her passion is not ungovernable like that of man, but as a gentle steed that she can guide e'en where she will, and as occasion offers can now bit up and now give rein. She has a captain's eye, and stout must be that fortress of the heart in which she finds no place of vantage. Does thy blood beat fast in youth? She will outrun it, nor will her kisses tire. Art thou set toward ambition? She will unlock thy inner heart, and show thee roads that lead to glory. Art thou worn and weary? She has comfort in her breast. Art thou fallen? She can lift thee up, and to the illusion of thy sense gild defeat with triumph. Ay, Harmachis, she can do these things, for Nature ever fights upon her side; and while she does them she can deceive and shape a secret end in which thou hast no part. And thus Woman rules the world. For her are wars; for her men spend their strength in gathering gains; for her they do well and ill, and seek for greatness, to find oblivion. But still she sits like yonder Sphinx, and smiles; and no man has ever read all the riddle of her smile, or known all the mystery of her heart. Mock not! mock not! Harmachis; for he must be great indeed who can defy the power of Woman, which, pressing round him like the invisible air, is often strongest when the senses least discover it.

Snake pushes me out of the way, using me like a weapon to knock Gage and Tank off balance. He runs for the door and bursts out before we get a chance to get back to our feet. The men try to keep me in the house, but I don’t listen to them. Chasing after Snake, I reach under my shirt and wrap my hand around the handle of my gun. He doesn’t have a car, but that’s not going to stop the slimy piece of shit from trying to get away from me. After jangling a few handles, he finds an unlocked door and dives behind the wheel. My shot obliterates the back window, but it doesn’t stop him from cranking the engine

These days, there are so few pure country people left on the concession roads that we may be in need of a new category of membership, much as sons and daughters of veterans are now allowed to join the Legion. A few simple questions could be asked, a small fee paid and (assuming that the answers are correct) you could be granted the status of an "almost local." Here are some of the questions you might be asked: Do you have just one suit for weddings and funerals? Do you save plastic buckets? Do you leave your car doors unlocked at all times? Do you have an inside dog and an outside dog? Has your outside dog never been to town? When you pass a neighbour in the car, do you wave from the elbow or do you merely raise one finger from the steering wheel? Do you have trouble keeping the car or truck going in a straight line because you are looking at crops or livestock? Do you sometimes find yourself sitting in the car in the middle of a dirt road chatting with a neighbour out the window while other cars take the ditch to get around you? Can you tell whose tractor is going by without looking out the window? Can people recognize you from three hundred yards away by the way you walk or the tilt of your hat? If somebody honks their horn at you, do you automatically smile and wave? Do most of your conversations open with some observation about the weather? Is your most important news source the store in the village? Have you had surgery in the local hospital? If you hear about a death or a fire in the community, does the woman in your house immediately start making sandwiches or a cake? Do you sometimes find yourself referring to a farm in the neighbourhood by the name of someone who owned it more than twenty-five years ago? If you answered yes to all of the above questions, consider it official: you are a local.

When Elisa arrives at McDonald’s, the manager unlocks the door and lets her in. Sometimes the husband-and-wife cleaning crew are just finishing up. More often, it’s just Elisa and the manager in the restaurant, surrounded by an empty parking lot. For the next hour or so, the two of them get everything ready. They turn on the ovens and grills. They go downstairs into the basement and get food and supplies for the morning shift. They get the paper cups, wrappers, cardboard containers, and packets of condiments. They step into the big freezer and get the frozen bacon, the frozen pancakes, and the frozen cinnamon rolls. They get the frozen hash browns, the frozen biscuits, the frozen McMuffins. They get the cartons of scrambled egg mix and orange juice mix. They bring the food upstairs and start preparing it before any customers appear, thawing some things in the microwave and cooking other things on the grill. They put the cooked food in special cabinets to keep it warm.

Dude, Kellan, I know you and Kiera are in there . . . people saw you two head that way. Open the door.” Cursing, Kellan separated from me. I instantly went for his mouth, but he pushed me back a little and unlocked the bathroom door right next to us. Cracking it open, he scowled at the person on the other side of it. “What, Matt?” I laid my head on Kellan’s chest and stared blankly at Matt looking at us through the slit in the door. He didn’t look happy. “Are you about to have sex in my bathroom?” Without missing a beat, Kellan responded with “Yes,” and started closing the door. My hazed mind found it funny, and I started laughing. Matt stopped the door with his hand. “Kell, we only have one bathroom. I don’t want people peeing in my kitchen sink.” Sighing in irritation, Kellan opened the door wider and glared at Matt. Matt looked down at Kellan’s bare chest, then my half-naked chest, then snapped his eyes up to Kellan’s eyes. Kellan shook his head and shrugged. “Bedroom or bathroom,” was all he said. Matt scrunched his brow and Kellan repeated himself, raising his eyebrows. “Bedroom or bathroom? You pick, Matt.” Sighing, Matt rolled his eyes. “Fine, but make it quick.” Grinning, Kellan slammed the door shut and locked it again. I giggled as my mind swam. On the other side I heard Matt slurringly yell, “And clean up when you’re done, damn it!

She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk steadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen on her husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently: the twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him by virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made them seem an odious deceit. He had married her with that bad past life hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his innocence of the worst that was imputed to him. Her honest ostentatious nature made the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any mortal. But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd patchwork, had a loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her—now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when she locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to her unhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn and not reproach. But she needed time to gather up her strength; she needed to sob out her farewell to all the gladness and pride of her life. When she had resolved to go down, she prepared herself by some little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard onlooker; they were her way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible that she had begun a new life in which she embraced humiliation. She took off all her ornaments and put on a plain black gown, and instead of wearing her much-adorned cap and large bows of hair, she brushed her hair down and put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made her look suddenly like an early Methodist. Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out and had come in saying that she was not well, had spent the time in an agitation equal to hers. He had looked forward to her learning the truth from others, and had acquiesced in that probability, as something easier to him than any confession. But now that he imagined the moment of her knowledge come, he awaited the result in anguish. His daughters had been obliged to consent to leave him, and though he had allowed some food to be brought to him, he had not touched it. He felt himself perishing slowly in unpitied misery. Perhaps he should never see his wife's face with affection in it again. And if he turned to God there seemed to be no answer but the pressure of retribution. It was eight o'clock in the evening before the door opened and his wife entered. He dared not look up at her. He sat with his eyes bent down, and as she went towards him she thought he looked smaller—he seemed so withered and shrunken. A movement of new compassion and old tenderness went through her like a great wave, and putting one hand on his which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on his shoulder, she said, solemnly but kindly— "Look up, Nicholas." He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazed for a moment: her pale face, her changed, mourning dress, the trembling about her mouth, all said, "I know;" and her hands and eyes rested gently on him. He burst out crying and they cried together, she sitting at his side. They could not yet speak to each other of the shame which she was bearing with him, or of the acts which had brought it down on them. His confession was silent, and her promise of faithfulness was silent. Open-minded as she was, she nevertheless shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness, as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire. She could not say, "How much is only slander and false suspicion?" and he did not say, "I am innocent.

A few days later, I found myself back in the cellar. But this time, I was involved in an activity way more fun than cataloging magic junk. “What happened to the promise of making out in castles?” I asked as Archer and I pulled back for a breather. I was leaning back against one of the shelves, my hands clutching Archer’s waist. Over his shoulder, there was a jar of eyeballs staring at me, and I nodded toward it. “Because, see, things like that? Kind of a mood killer.” He glanced at the jar and then turned back to me, waggling his eyebrows. “Really? I find it has the opposite effect.” Giggling, I elbowed him in the stomach and pushed myself off the shelf. “You’re sick.” He smiled and ducked his head to kiss me again, but I skirted around him. “Come on, Cross, we came down here for a reason, and it wasn’t fooling around.” Smirking, Archer folded his arms over his chest. “May not have been your reason, but-“ I cut him off. “No. Don’t distract me with your sexy talk. We need to search this place, and that spell Elodie did will only last so long.” Elodie had swooped into my body at the cellar door, doing a quick spell to unlock it. She hadn’t even looked at Archer, much less said anything. And the second the lock clicked open, she’d vanished. The smirk disappeared from Archer’s face, and he actually looked kind of sullen. “Are you honestly that bummed about not hooking up right now?” I teased. But he was deadly serious when he shook his head and said, “It’s not that. It’s Elodie.” “What about her?” Archer rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, Mercer. Maybe it’s that I’m not completely crazy about the ghost of my ex-girlfriend occasionally inhabiting the body of my current girlfriend.” I backed up another step and ran into another shelf. Something fell off and thunked against the dirt floor. “Whoa, I’m your girlfriend now?” Archer shrugged. “We’ve tried to kill each other, fought ghouls, and kissed a lot. I’m pretty sure we’re married in some cultures.” Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “Whatever. Look, the fact of the matter is, I don’t have any magic right now. Elodie does. If her occasionally using me as her puppet means that I have powers again, then I’m fine with it. And you should be, too. My body, my ghost, and all that.

I stopped by the super for the new key, climbed to my apartment, and studied my new lock. Big, metal, and shiny. Not a scratch on it. Even the key itself had a bizarre groove carved into it, which made the whole setup supposedly completely burglar proof. Pick that, Your Majesty. I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and shut it behind me. I kicked my shoes off, wincing at the hint of ache in my stomach. It would take a long time before it healed completely. At least I no longer bled. Tension fled from me. Tomorrow I would worry about Hugh d’Ambray and Andrea and Roland, but now I was simply happy. Aaahh. Home. My place, my smells, my familiar rug under my feet, my kitchen, my Curran in the kitchen chair . . . Wait a damn minute. “You!” I looked at the lock; I looked at him. So much for the burglar-proof door. He calmly finished writing something on a piece of paper, got up, and came toward me. My heart shot into overdrive. Little golden sparks laughed in his gray eyes. He handed me the piece of paper and smiled. “Can’t wait.” I just stared like an idiot. He inhaled my scent, opened the door, and left. I looked at the paper. I’ll be busy for the next eight weeks, so let’s set this for November 15th. Menu. I want lamb or venison steak. Baked potatoes with honey butter. Corn on the cob. Rolls. And apple pie, like the one you made before. I really liked it. I want it with ice cream. You owe me one naked dinner, but I’m not a complete beast, so you can wear a bra and panties if you so wish. The blue ones with the bow will do. Curran. Beast Lord of Atlanta.

The door handle turned. Someone knocked, and a man's voice called, "Uh, hello?" Valkyrie looked at Skulduggery, looked back at the others, looked at Skulduggery again. "Hello," Skulduggery said, speaking loudly to be heard over the alarm. "Hi," said the man. "The door's locked." "Is it?" "Yes." "That's funny" said Skulduggery. "Hold on a moment." He reached out, jiggled the handle a few times, then stepped back. "Yes, it's locked. You wouldn't happen to have the key, would you?" There was a delay in response from the other side. "I'm sorry," the man called, "Who am I speaking with?" Skulduggery tilted his head. "Who am I speaking with?" "This is Oscar Nightfall." "Are you sure?" "What?" "Are you sure you are who you say you are? This is the Great Chamber, after all. It's a very important place for very important people. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that someone, and I'm not saying that this applies to you in particular, but someone could conceivably lie about who they are in order to gain access to this room. I have to be vigilant, especially now. There's a war on, you know." Oscar Nightfall sounded puzzled. Who are you?" "Me? I'm nobody. I'm a cleaner. I'm one of the cleaners. I was cleaning the thrones and the door shut behind me. Now I can't get out. Could you try and find a key?" "What's your name? Give me you name." "No. It's mine." "Tell me your name!" "My name is Oscar Nightfall." "What? No it isn't. That's my name." "Is it? Since when?" "Since I took it!" "You didn't ask me if you could take it. I was using it first." "Open this door immediately." "I don't have the key." "I'll fetch the Cleavers." "I found the key. It was in the keyhole. It's always the last place you look isn't it? I'm unlocking the door now. Here we go." Skulduggery relaxed the air pressure, opened the door, and pulled Oscar Nightfall inside. Valkyrie stuck out her foot, and Oscar stumbled over it and Vex shoved him to Ghastly and Ghastly punched him. Oscar fell down and didn't get up again. Skulduggery closed the door once more.

Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations. The stretch of Hudson Street where I live is each day the scene of an intricate sidewalk ballet. I make my own first entrance into it a little after eight when I put out my garbage gcan, surely a prosaic occupation, but I enjoy my part, my little clang, as the junior droves of junior high school students walk by the center of the stage dropping candy wrapper. (How do they eat so much candy so early in the morning?) While I sweep up the wrappers I watch the other rituals of the morning: Mr Halpert unlocking the laundry's handcart from its mooring to a cellar door, Joe Cornacchia's son-in-law stacking out the empty crates from the delicatessen, the barber bringing out his sidewalk folding chair, Mr. Goldstein arranging the coils of wire which proclaim the hardware store is open, the wife of the tenement's super intendent depositing her chunky three-year-old with a toy mandolin on the stoop, the vantage point from which he is learning English his mother cannot speak. Now the primary childrren, heading for St. Luke's, dribble through the south; the children from St. Veronica\s cross, heading to the west, and the children from P.S 41, heading toward the east. Two new entrances are made from the wings: well-dressed and even elegant women and men with brief cases emerge from doorways and side streets. Most of these are heading for the bus and subways, but some hover on the curbs, stopping taxis which have miraculously appeared at the right moment, for the taxis are part of a wider morning ritual: having dropped passengers from midtown in the downtown financial district, they are now bringing downtowners up tow midtown. Simultaneously, numbers of women in housedresses have emerged and as they crisscross with one another they pause for quick conversations that sound with laughter or joint indignation, never, it seems, anything in between. It is time for me to hurry to work too, and I exchange my ritual farewell with Mr. Lofaro, the short, thick bodied, white-aproned fruit man who stands outside his doorway a little up the street, his arms folded, his feet planted, looking solid as the earth itself. We nod; we each glance quickly up and down the street, then look back at eachother and smile. We have done this many a morning for more than ten years, and we both know what it means: all is well. The heart of the day ballet I seldom see, because part off the nature of it is that working people who live there, like me, are mostly gone, filling the roles of strangers on other sidewalks. But from days off, I know enough to know that it becomes more and more intricate. Longshoremen who are not working that day gather at the White Horse or the Ideal or the International for beer and conversation. The executives and business lunchers from the industries just to the west throng the Dorgene restaurant and the Lion's Head coffee house; meat market workers and communication scientists fill the bakery lunchroom.

  It feels like our indigenous peoples are an old grandmother who lives in a very large house. It is a beautiful house with plenty of rooms and comfortable furniture. But years ago, some people came into her house and locked her upstairs in the bedroom. Today her home is full of people. They are sitting on her furniture. They are eating her food. They are having a party in her house. They have since come upstairs and unlocked the door to her, bedroom but now it is much later, and she is tired, old, weak and sick; so she can't or doesn't want to come out. But what is the most hurtful and what causes her the most pain, is that virtually no one from this party ever comes upstairs to find the grandmother in the bedroom.  No one sits down next to her on the bed, takes her hand, and simply says, "Thank you. Thank you for letting us be in your house.

She pulled the shawl closer as a tall, lithe figure cut across the parking lot and joined her at the passenger door. “You’re already famous,” Colby Lane told her, his dark eyes twinkling in his lean, scarred face. “You’ll see yourself on the evening news, if you live long enough to watch it.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Tate’s on his way right now.” “Unlock this thing and get me out of here!” she squeaked. He chuckled. “Coward.” He unlocked the door and let her climb in. By the time he got behind the wheel and took off, Tate was striding across the parking lot with blood in his eye. Cecily blew him a kiss as Colby gunned the engine down the busy street. “You’re living dangerously tonight,” Colby told her. “He knows where you live,” he added. “He should. He paid for the apartment,” she added in a sharp, hurt tone. She wrapped her arms closer around her. “I don’t want to go home, Colby. Can I stay with you tonight?” She knew, as few other people did, that Colby Lane was still passionately in love with his ex-wife, Maureen. He had nothing to do with other women even two years after his divorce was final. He drank to excess from time to time, but he wasn’t dangerous. Cecily trusted no one more. He’d been a good friend to her, as well as to Tate, over the years. “He won’t like it,” he said. She let out a long breath. “What does it matter now?” she asked wearily. “I’ve burned my bridges.” “I don’t know why that socialite Audrey had to tell you,” he muttered irritably. “It was none of her business.” “Maybe she wants a big diamond engagement ring, and Tate can’t afford it because he’s keeping me,” she said bitterly. He glanced at her rigid profile. “He won’t marry her.” She made a sound deep in her throat. “Why not? She’s got everything…money, power, position and beauty-and a degree from Vassar.” “In psychology,” Colby mused. “She’s been going around with Tate for several months.” “He goes around with a lot of women. He won’t marry any of them.” “Well, he certainly won’t marry me,” she assured him. “I’m white.” “More of a nice, soft tan,” he told her. “You can marry me. I’ll take care of you.” She made a face at him. “You’d call me Maureen in your sleep and I’d lay your head open with the lamp. It would never work.

Unlike many at court, who tried to spend as much time in front of the king as they could, Destin valued his privacy. So, in addition to his apartment within the palace, he kept a suite of rooms at the Cup and Comfort Inn on the riverfront. Any kind of pleasure could be had at the Cup and Comfort for a price, but what Destin treasured most was anonymity. This was a place where he could be himself. So it was with not a little alarm that he unlocked the door to his rooms at the inn to find Lila Barrowhill sleeping in his fireside chair. He froze in the doorway, but she must have heard him, because she opened her eyes and smiled at him sleepily. “I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in. I didn’t want to draw attention by sitting outside your door.” Destin stepped inside and shut and locked the door behind him. Then turned to glare at her, his arms folded. Lila grinned when she saw his expression. “Blood and bones, Karn, I’m so glad you’re still alive. It always seems that I’m a lot happier to see you than you are to see me. Well, except for that time you came to Oden’s Ford. Then there was that time in King Gerard’s garden—” “How did you find this place?” “I needed a cup and some comfort, and this place was recommended,” she said. She held up a cup she’d no doubt filled down in the taproom. “It’s truly amazing. You really can get anything you want here.” She winked at him.

Don't call me kid.” I pushed off of the wall, rage slithering through me. “This Academy might make me wear a uniform like a high school student, but I'm eighteen and I've looked after myself most of my life anyway. You think it would have been any different back there if I'd had a friend with me? We're freshmen. We're not trained to fight Nymphs.” Orion's jaw ticked as he absorbed my words. Eventually, he nodded, his eyes moving to look up at the tower. A baying howl sounded in the distance and he glanced over his shoulder. “The hunt's started, I should go and join them.” “Be careful,” I whispered. He looked back at me with a frown and something broken and desperate shone from his eyes for a moment. He blinked firmly and his expression morphed into a fierce scowl. “Stop looking at me like that,” he snarled and I fought the urge to recoil from his terrifying tone. “Like what?” “You know what,” he snapped. “I'm your teacher.” “I know,” I balked, horrified at what he was suggesting. That he could somehow read how much I wanted him. “Do you?” he stepped forward. I nodded firmly, though I wasn't sure my body was getting the message because I had the urge to wrap myself around him and kiss him goodbye. It was absolutely crazy. But him running off after a Nymph made me dread the idea that he wouldn't come back. “Then stop looking at me like that.” Embarrassment poured through me like a tsunami, but I fought it away, elbowing aside my shame. Because how dare he accuse me of being inappropriate? He'd had this hands all over me the other day and he'd shouted at me for that too. I was so done with his bullshit. So I stepped forward, looking him square in the eye as my hands began to shake. “Then stop looking back, Lance.” I left him with a gobsmacked expression on his face as I turned away, casting air at the symbol above the door. It unlocked with a loud clunk and I darted inside, slamming it behind me without a single glance back.(Darcy)

We take the stairs down to the first level of the parking garage and I lead us toward the area reserved for doctors. She makes her way toward a black Audi, turns, and waits for me to join her. I smirk. “That’s not my car.” She nods. “Right, of course. I see it now.” She goes to a bright yellow Ferrari that belongs to one of the plastic surgeons. The vanity license plate reads: SXY DOC88. “Here we are.” “Not even close.” “Oh, okay. I get it. You aren’t flashy. Maybe that gray Range Rover over there?” I press the unlock button on my key fob and my rear lights flash. There she is, the car I’ve driven since I was in medical school. “You’re kidding. A Prius?! Satan himself drives a Prius?!” She turns around as if hoping to find someone else she can share this moment with. All she’s got is me. I shrug. “It gets good gas mileage.” She blinks exaggeratedly. “I couldn’t be more shocked if you’d hitched a horse to a buggy.” I chuckle and open the back door to toss in her backpack. “Get in. Traffic is going to be hell.” We buckle up in silence, back up and leave the parking garage in silence, pull out into traffic in silence. Finally, I ask, “Where do you live?” “On the west side. Right across from Franklin Park.” “Good. I have an errand I need to run that’s right by there. Mind if I do that before I drop you off?” “Well seeing as how you stole my backpack and forced me into your car, I don’t really think it matters what I want.” I see. She’s still pouting. That’s fine. “Good. Glad we’re on the same page.” She doesn’t think I’m funny.

Dating yes. But she thinks we're, uh, more than dating." "Oh," he says, thoughtful. Then he grins. "Oh." The reason her lips are turning his favorite color is because Emma's mom thinks they've been dating and mating. The blush extends down her neck and disappears into her T-shirt. He should probably say something to make her feel more comfortable. But teasing her seems so much more fun. "Well then, the least she could do is give us some privacy-" "Ohmysweetgoodness!" She snatches her backpack from the seat and marches around her car to the driver's side. Before she can get the door unlocked, he plucks the key from her fingers and tucks it into his jeans' pocket. She moves to retrieve it, but stops when she realizes where she's about to go fishing. He's never seen her this red. He laughs. "Calm down, Emma. I'm just kidding. Don't leave." "Yeah, well, it's not funny. You should have seen her this morning. She almost cried. my mom doesn't cry." She crosses her arms again but relaxes against her door. "She cried? That's pretty insulting." She cracks a tiny grin. "Yeah, it's an insult to me. She thinks I would...would..." "More than date me?" She nods. He steps toward her and puts his hand beside her on the car, leaning in. A live current seems to shimmy up his spine. What are you doing? "But she should know that you don't even think of me like that. That it would never even cross your mind," he murmurs. She looks away, satisfying his unspoken question-it has crossed her mind. The same way it crosses his. How often? Does she feel the voltage between them, too? Who cares, idiot? She belongs to Grom. Or are you going to let a few sparks keep you from uniting the kingdoms? He pulls back, clenching his teeth. His pockets are the only safe place for his hands at the moment. "Why don't I meet her then? You think that would make her feel better?" "Um." She swipes her hair to the other side of her face. Her expression falls somewhere between shock and expectation. And she had every right to expect it-he's been entertaining the idea of kissing her for over two weeks now. She fidgets the door handle. "Yeah, it might. She won't let me go anywhere-especially with you-if she doesn't meet you first." "Should I be afraid?" She sighs. "Normally I would say no. But after this morning..." She shrugs. "How about I follow you to your house so you can drop off your car? Then she can interrogate me. When she sees how charming I am, she'll let you ride to the beach with me." She rolls her eyes. "Just don't be too charming. If you're too smooth, she'll never believe-just don't overdue it, okay?" "This is getting complicated," he says, unlocking her car. "Just remember, this is your idea and your fault. Now would be the time to back out." He chuckles and opens the door for her. "Don't lose me on the road.

No one said a word, and I waited a beat, then pushed forward. Screw Kevin. Screw Maggie. Screw whatever happened to them now. I went after Caden. He didn’t have to push his way through the crowd. It automatically opened for him. Not so much for me. I was at a disadvantage, and when I ran to the parking lot, he was already in the car and peeling past me. “HEY!” I yelled, raising my hands in the air. He braked, a little too close for comfort, right next to me. The passenger window rolled down. “What?” I reached for the door. “Let me in.” His eyebrows pinched together. “Why?” “Let me in.” He unlocked the door. I opened it and climbed in. “Okay. I’m with you.” I had no idea what I was doing. “Excuse me?” “I’m with you.” I clapped the dashboard, pointing ahead. “Whatever you’re going to do, I’m in. You seem to need a friend. You’re in luck. I could use one myself. So I’m in.” “I’m going to get drunk and have sex.” “Oh.” He cocked an eyebrow. “You still in?” He was laughing now. He was still mad, but he was laughing. For whatever reason—maybe I did want to go with him, or maybe I heard my own voice calling me boring and pathetic again—I sat back and folded my hands in my lap. “I’m in.” He shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into..” He shifted his Land Rover into drive and started forward. “But that’s your problem, not mine.” He careened out of the parking lot, and I fell against the door. I grabbed the oh shit handle above my head, and I had a feeling that was going to be the theme for the rest of the night: Oh, shit.

She had sworn to herself not to speak to Arin, but then he said, “You’re coming with me to the harbor.” This surprised her into saying, “To do what? Why not lock me up in the barracks? It would be a perfect prison for your prize.” He continued to walk her down the halls of her home. “Unless Cheat changes his mind about you.” Kestrel imagined the auctioneer unlocking her cell door. “I suppose I’m no good to you dead.” “I would never let that happen.” “What a touching concern for Valorian life. As if you hadn’t let your leader kill that woman. As if you’re not responsible for the death of my friends.” They stopped before the door to Kestrel’s suite. Arin faced her. “I will let every single Valorian in this city die if it means that you don’t.” “Like Jess?” Her eyes swam with sudden, unshed tears. “Ronan?” Arin looked away. The skin above his eye was beginning to blacken from where she had kicked him. “I spent ten years as a slave. I couldn’t be one anymore. What did you imagine, tonight, in the carriage? That it would be fine for me to always be afraid to touch you?” “That has nothing to do with anything. I am not a fool. You sold yourself to me with the intention of betrayal.” “But I didn’t know you. I didn’t know how you--” “You’re right. You don’t know me. You’re a stranger.” He flattened a palm against the door. “What about the Valorian children?” she demanded. “What have you done with them? Have they been poisoned, too?” “No. Kestrel, no, of course not. They will be cared for. In comfort. By their nurses. This was always part of the plan. Do you think we’re monsters?” “I think you are.

The Portal Potion Success! After weeks and weeks of trying, I’ve finally discovered the correct ingredients for the potion I’d hoped to create for my son! With just a few drops, the potion turns any written work into a portal to the world it describes. Even with my ability to create portals to and from the Otherworld, I never thought it would be possible to create a substance that allowed me passage to any world I wished. My son will get to see the places and meet the characters he’s spent his whole childhood dreaming about! And best of all, I’ll get to watch his happiness soar as it happens! The ingredients are much simpler than I imagined, but difficult to obtain. Their purposes are more metaphysical than practical, so it took some imagination to get the concoction right. The first requirement is a branch from the oldest tree in the woods. To bring the pages to life, I figured the potion would need the very thing that brought the paper to life in the first place. And what else has more life than an ancient tree? The second ingredient is a feather from the finest pheasant in the sky. This will guarantee your potion has no limits, like a bird in flight. It will ensure you can travel to lands far and wide, beyond your imagination. The third component is a liquefied lock and key that belonged to a true love. Just as this person unlocked your heart to a life of love, it will open the door of the literary dimensions your heart desires to experience. The fourth ingredient is two weeks of moonlight. Just as the moon causes waves in the ocean, the moonlight will stir your potion to life. Last, but most important, give the potion a spark of magic to activate all the ingredients. Send it a beam of joy straight from your heart. The potion does not work on any biographies or history books, but purely on works that have been imagined. Now, I must warn about the dangers of entering a fictional world: 1. Time only exists as long as the story continues. Be sure to leave the book before the story ends, or you may disappear as the story concludes. 2. Each world is made of only what the author describes. Do not expect the characters to have any knowledge of our world or the Otherworld. 3. Beware of the story’s villains. Unlike people in our world or the Otherworld, most literary villains are created to be heartless and stripped of all morals, so do not expect any mercy should you cross paths with one. 4. The book you choose to enter will act as your entrance and exit. Be certain nothing happens to it; it is your only way out. The

Chad made a sour face. He turned to Shadow. “Okay,” said Chad. “Through that door and into the sally port.” “What?” “Out there. Where the car is.” Liz unlocked the doors. “You make sure that orange uniform comes right back here,” she said to the deputy. “The last felon we sent down to Lafayette, we never saw the uniform again. They cost the county money.” They walked Shadow out to the sally port, where a car sat idling. It wasn’t a sheriff’s department car. It was a black town car. Another deputy, a grizzled white guy with a mustache, stood by the car, smoking a cigarette. He crushed it out underfoot as they came close, and opened the back door for Shadow. Shadow sat down, awkwardly, his movements hampered by the cuffs and the hobble. There was no grille between the back and the front of the car. The two deputies climbed into the front of the car. The black deputy started the motor. They waited for the sally port door to open. “Come on, come on,” said the black deputy, his fingers drumming against the steering wheel. Chad Mulligan tapped on the side window. The white deputy glanced at the driver, then he lowered the window. “This is wrong,” said Chad. “I just wanted to say that.” “Your comments have been noted, and will be conveyed to the appropriate authorities,” said the driver. The doors to the outside world opened. The snow was still falling, dizzying into the car’s headlights. The driver put his foot on the gas, and they were heading back down the street and on to Main Street. “You heard about Wednesday?” said the driver. His voice sounded different, now, older, and familiar. “He’s dead.” “Yeah. I know,” said Shadow. “I saw it on TV.” “Those fuckers,” said the white officer. It was the first thing he had said, and his voice was rough and accented and, like the driver’s, it was a voice that Shadow knew. “I tell you, they are fuckers, those fuckers.” “Thanks for coming to get me,” said Shadow. “Don’t mention it,” said the driver. In the light of an oncoming car his face already seemed to look older. He looked smaller, too. The last time Shadow had seen him he had been wearing lemon-yellow gloves and a check jacket. “We were in Milwaukee. Had to drive like demons when Ibis called.” “You think we let them lock you up and send you to the chair, when I’m still waiting to break your head with my hammer?” asked the white deputy gloomily, fumbling in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. His accent was Eastern European. “The real shit will hit the fan in an hour or less,” said Mr. Nancy, looking more like himself with each moment, “when they really turn up to collect you. We’ll pull over before we get to Highway 53 and get you out of those shackles and back into your own clothes.” Czernobog held up a handcuff key and smiled. “I like the mustache,” said Shadow. “Suits you.” Czernobog stroked it with a yellowed finger. “Thank you.” “Wednesday,” said Shadow. “Is he really dead? This isn’t some kind of trick, is it?” He realized that he had been holding on to some kind of hope, foolish though it was. But the expression on Nancy’s face told him all he needed to know, and the hope was gone.