Kimberly Raiser

“I could feel my blood just starting to boil, like when I’d lost my car keys and I knew they were around somewhere close, but I couldn’t find them anyway, and I wanted to scream.”

“I had a dream about candy canes and dolphins.”

“She had a wild imagination, and sometimes she could fool herself.”

“My imagination was going wild, and that troublesome part of me didn’t care.”

“Tara flashed a 'look' at me. I didn’t like it very much. It made me feel---small.”

“She was the image of her mother, only in a pint.”

“She looked so happy, so content, so beautiful. Her long brown curls swept around her face at every turn. I loved the way she would always get a strand of hair caught just over her nose so she would have to brush it away with her fingers.”

“Ok, she was close to being right. I did have a thing about cats. And I didn’t particularly have a good reason for feeling that way. It was as if it was, innate. Tara on the other hand had this freakish affinity towards them, or should I say, they towards her. It was like she had the fresh scent of salmon that only cats could smell. It was endearing, and a little creepy.”

“I could write stories about my dreams that would make a person’s skin peel from their bones.”

“This place was already affecting my brain.”

“My heart nearly stopped. I could feel my pores open to release what sweat I had left.”

“It was like one of those dreams where you can’t move your feet as fast as you want to, or one leg is longer than the other. I’ve had lots of those.”