The falling snow deadened all sound and made

The falling snow deadened all sound and made the silence softer. In the garden, a magpie swooped down and picked up a dead mouse the cat had left on the path. In my warm bed I lay

and wondered about the girl who was staring though my window. She was barefoot and seemed unaware of the cold. She scrapped her finger across the frosted pane. A heart?

And just like that, she was gone.I ran outside into the glistening silent night. Nothing.The next morning, however, the frosted heart appeared on my window. "Tonight" it said.

The message turned my spine to ice. What could "tonight" mean? What was this mysterious, cold hearted woman planning? To be on the safe side, I bought a shotgun, wine and cheese.

But I had my reasons. Each hair follicle hitting the spandex was like a knife stabbing into my pelvis. Some unknown condition, my spymaster had overlooked it at my physical, inst

-ead of instructing me to apply warm compresses and gently pull out the ingrown pubic hairs one by one, the sadist. So here I was about to perform my high-wire act with irritating

chafing. The Spandex pants amplified the friction on my red, raw skin and brought me close to tears. But the show must go on. I clambered up the ladder, wincing with each step, and

made it to the acrobatics platform. My good for nothing partner - on the other end of the tent across an impossible chasm - looked especially unreliable tonight. The music started

& ended as a single gunshot shattered the pause it left in the audience's breath. I'd been shot. I fell. As I fell I considered how this damned net hadn't save me after all.