LeoneTK
@leonetk.bsky.social
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Author, Member of The Dead Writers Guild 📘 Click link below for your chance at a FREE 👇🏾EBOOK!! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17WQDDcbL4rpAiROy0jiR70ZARa2htO27js1TSDZ4NCo/edit#responses
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An anthology from beyond the bookshelf 💀📘
#WritingCommunity #writerslift #AuthorsOfTwitter #authorlife #reading #ebook #episode #chapter #page #indie #selfpublishing #amazon #shortstory #funny #comedy #rick #morty #jerry #hot #new #today #english #Literature

www.amazon.com/Carnation-De...
Carnation
A collection of short stories from the Tales of The Dead Writers Guild
www.amazon.com
leonetk.bsky.social
feel like running. She felt like breathing. Maybe, she thought, maybe it was finally time to choose her own mountain instead of scrambling up someone else’s.🖤✏️
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encouragement. “Then it’s time to build one. Piece by piece. Out of what you love, not what they expect. Standards should lift you higher, not crush you under their weight.”

For the first time in weeks, Mira didn’t
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stone. For months she had measured her worth in grades, promotions, & applause—always glancing sideways, never forward.

“What if I don’t know which ladder is mine?” she whispered.

Evan smiled, not in pity but in quiet
leonetk.bsky.social
Living by someone else’s standards means you’re climbing a ladder that may not even lean against the right wall.”

Her throat tightened. The truth in his words pressed against her ribs like a
leonetk.bsky.social
else’s. There’s a difference.”

Mira frowned. “But isn’t pushing myself supposed to be good?”

“It depends,” he said softly. “Raising your standards means you decide what kind of person you want to become, then climb toward that vision.
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“Why do you look so tired, Mira?”

She set her books down on the desk & sighed. “Because every day I feel like I’m sprinting to catch up to someone else’s finish line.”

Evan leaned back in his chair, watching her carefully. “That’s not raising your standards. That’s borrowing someone
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any way they could name—his body slumped in the chair, eyes open but vacant, mouth slack. He had become nothing but an empty husk, abandoned by his own mind.

She leaned across the table & kept speaking to him, as if he might still answer. And in that ruined little house,
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whispered back, “Good. That’s what love is.”

The next morning, neighbors found their door ajar. Inside, the room smelled of wax & smoke. She sat alone at the table, murmuring questions into the silence. He was gone. Not dead in
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only her, only their nightly descents into thought-mazes that left him gutted come morning. She smiled at his unraveling, mistaking it for devotion.

Until the night he whispered, “I don’t exist anymore.”

She laughed softly, touched his face, &
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of being alone?” she asked one night, & he bled inside.

“Why do you stay alive? Do you believe you deserve to?” she pressed another night, & something cracked.

The world outside their home rotted unnoticed. His work collapsed. Friends stopped calling. He didn’t care. He had
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way she demanded truth, the way she pressed into every silence, every hesitation, every tremor in his voice. But what began as intimacy became interrogation, what began as bonding became dismantling.

“Why do you love me? Or is it just fear
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—his habits, his laughter, his small dreams—but months of their midnight dissections had stripped it all away. Each talk was a dissection table, & she was the surgeon peeling him open, piece by piece.

At first, he thought it was love. The
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“Do you even remember who you were before me?” she asked, her tone soft but cutting, like a scalpel dipped in honey.

He sat hunched in the candlelight, unable to answer. The words piled in his throat, rotted there. He used to know who he was
leonetk.bsky.social
Roll-rumble, swoosh-swish, bugs clap & cheer,
Freedom is flying when wheels spin near!
Zoom-zoom, clack-clack, follow his trail,
High-flying Sammy, the skateboarding snail!🖤✏️
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Zoom-zoom, clack-clack, snail on the go,
Sammy’s skateboard’s stealing the show!
Whoosh in the air, spin ’round, land tight,
Shell shining golden, a dazzling sight.
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I wish they did
🎈Art: @SoulFullHyena
leonetk.bsky.social
Learning to be comfortable as the villain in someone’s story🖤✏️
leonetk.bsky.social
Imagine being a baseball player in a golf tournament & seeing a miss🖤✏️
leonetk.bsky.social
I’m the very first underwater runner!”

& from that day on, the ocean floor had a new sound: the steady patter of an octopus running joyfully across the sand. 🐙✨🖤✏️
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perfect rhythm. He bounded over rocks, zipped through kelp forests, & tapped the finish shell before anyone else.

The crowd cheered. Coral clacked her claws. “Ollie, you did it!”

Ollie beamed. “I may not be the best swimmer or the strongest climber, but
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Coral Games. Fish zipped, turtles glided, & dolphins leapt. Then came the “Underwater Run.” Everyone thought Ollie would flop.

The whistle blew—& Ollie zoomed forward, his eight legs pumping in
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along the sandy ocean floor, legs wobbling like jelly. Sometimes he tripped over his own tentacles & face-planted in the sand. Sometimes he got tangled in seaweed & laughed until the clams joined in. But slowly, Ollie grew steadier.

One morning, the ocean held its annual