The buzzing gets louder as she approaches. The halls clear and she rounds the counter. Her skin crawls, lumps traveling under her skin as if her blood had formed into rocks. She staggered with the effort of pulling thousands of entities with her everywhere, tugging at her skin.
One escaped. This happened sometimes. A bee forced itself out through her nose, one of the only places they could get out. Her nose bled from the force and she reached up a hand to dab at it. The bee flew away. The girl stared at the blood on her hand. She had long ago become desensitized to this. 
She began to speed up from her slowed pace, the bees speeding up in return. Her skin moved in sync with her steps, her body deformed and lumpy. She rounded the corner, and people filtered back into the halls. 
The lone bee buzzed around, lost, and was captured in a jar.

Orange and green are near in the rainbow, but not close enough. With no yellow in between though, the space grows ever smaller. If orange and green become close and touch, what happens to the rest of the rainbow? White creeps in around the edges as the two colors creep together. In the dazzling aftermath of orange and green’s collision, white creeps away slowly. It returns to the body of pink, who sends oozing tendrils of paint and glitter to take orange away. They bleed into each other as green is alone again with the loss of the neighboring color. Orange cannot be allowed to touch green, pink will make sure of it. By putting a barrier in between, the two colors are unable to make contact. Red and blue are suitable guards. But green grows restless. It reaches out, searching for orange, but all it finds is purple. Luckily, purple is willing to help, and accompany green in the journey. But black won’t allow purple to leave, but a compromise is reached. Green, black, and purple all continue the search. They come across the barrier and clash with red and blue. The flood of color reveals hidden spaces, and orange joins the rainbow again.

They are a happy family, and it was ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Sure, Nigel never played with the rest of them. Sure, nobody knew what was happening in Karina’s life. Sure, nobody knew why Tatum was so mean. Sure, nobody knew why Thomas’s room was filled with red when he clearly liked green better. And sure, nobody knew where Flora went or why Jerry missed her so much. But they were happy and perfectly functional. 
There's a room in the house that's a little different from the others. The door locks. It's scratched up. There's no sliver of light coming from underneath it in the night. 
It scares the children.
All five of them. 
One of them knows what's behind that door. He knows what exists where the others don't dare to go. 
One of them is curious to find out. His satisfaction won't bring him back.
One of them never thinks about it. It never crosses his mind.
One of them worries about what happens inside the room.
One of them wonders why nobody ever enters it.

And one of them isn't there to wonder.

A man is lying face-down in a puddle of maple syrup just a few paces from the courthouse steps. Clutched in his hand are a crumpled lavender envelope and an old transistor radio. 
The envelope is word of his daughter's condition. The radio is a knick-knack he will turn into his latest creation. The maple syrup, well, it doesn’t matter where it came from. 
The man rises from the street. He pays no mind to the stickiness of his face or the gravel glued to his suit. He’s used to it by now. His only thoughts are on his daughter.
She went away, years ago. This is the first letter he’s received in a long time, but it did not bear welcome news. 
The man ambles down the street as if he were drunk. The girl had promised she would bring his daughter back. 
She has lied.
And now she shall pay.

Essence was so excited. Her first date, and her first date with Angela. Angela, the prettiest girl in the lab. Everything about her was perfect, and so the date must be too. Essence could think of nothing but Angela. The pillows on her bed made her think of Angela’s feathers, the chocolate she so loved, of her eyes. Angela’s beauty was a light in the dank halls of the workplace. Her skin looked amazing when she was covered in blood, which Essence longed to be the one to put there. Most importantly, Angela was so sophisticated that her standards were as high as she flew. And so, everything had to be perfect. A good impression had to be made. Essence had spent the last few weeks learning Angela’s tastes, so she could perfectly procure this day to be perfect. Everything was ready, especially the biscuits. 

She stands on the cliff, blue hair flying around her head with the force of the wind. It wasn’t there before, the chasm. Not when it was convenient for them. But now, right when she would have escaped, it was there, blocking her path. Her options had narrowed: go back and die, or jump and die. And the girl closed her eyes and leaped.
The wind rushed past her, the ground approaching all too quickly. As the blue girl fell she remembered all the friends she had left behind: the little blind boy, the dramatic narcissist, the liar, the murderer, the shy girl, and her very own twin.
Her dear red twin. They had almost never been separated since they were born. They had done everything together, did the same activities, had the same friends, everything.
And then A came.
She didn’t know who they were. She didn’t know what they wanted. But her twin had trusted them, so she had too. Everything seemed fine.
And then they were taken. Both of them, but they were not the only ones. There were 6 others just like them. And they lived together, grew up in captivity together. They had bonded. Even the liar, or so she thought.
Betrayal tasted like sugar cookies.
The remaining five of them tried to move on, but the blind boy couldn’t take it. Then the murderer fell. It was just a game to them, to A, a game of ‘who will survive’. But she wouldn’t play any longer.
Now she was leaving, escaping the castle that was all she had known, leaving behind her remaining friends. And Her.
She hit the ground. She cracked greatly, but it luckily wasn't far enough to shatter her completely.
But then she was lifted back up. The winged girl had come for her. They rose up far too quickly. It seemed like in no time, she was back at the top of the chasm. But the winged girl didn’t stop. She carried the blue girl further, further, further up, until the castle and the chasm were but a small dot in the clouds.
And then she was dropped.
And she realized she would never see any of them again, never be able to free them like she had promised.

She hit the ground with a shatter, and somewhere, far away in the castle, a redhead and a shy girl felt something break inside of them in the same way.

When it came to emotions, employees would notice that Hal and Angela were very different. 
Perhaps Hal’s district lack of them could be attributed to his being frozen for who knows how long, and Angela’s constant mood swings blamed on her status as a divine being, but it certainly caused a disturbance for their subordinates.
One of the subordinates in question had quite a bit to say on this matter.
Essence was new to the business. She had accepted the position in order to pay for her brother’s medical expenses, and may or may not be slightly regretting her decision.
The lab manager that she had been placed under was named Hal, and he had quite a strange reputation in the company. She had asked around during her first week and had only learned that he was ice-cold, both literally and figuratively.
On this particular day, Essence was playing messenger and transporting documents from Phil’s office to Hal’s when she heard a distinctly female voice that she was 90% sure was not Hal coming from inside his office. 
Conveniently, something that one of her coworkers had said to her resurfaced in her memory. They had told her that if she happens to hear a female voice from Hal’s office, to not enter and instead wait outside until a girl with large white wings exits.
Resigning herself to standing in the hallway for a very long time, Essence leaned against the wall next to the door and tried her hardest not to eavesdrop. 
It was really difficult.
Their conversation was just so interesting! They were talking about someone named Cassie, who the girl seemed quite fond of. Subconsciously leaning closer to the door, Essence was pretty much able to figure out what the girl was feeling just from her voice. She seemed very expressive and her voice would rise and lower in pitch and volume. Hal was quite different, showing that Essence’s coworkers were indeed telling the truth about him. He spoke in a monotone, never raising or lowering his voice.
Distracted, Essence didn’t realize when the female voice came closer, and the door opened. She nearly jumped out of her skin when someone excited the room. 
The girl was, quite simply, beautiful. Platinum hair tied in two loose braids, smooth chocolate skin, huge white wings, a modest white dress. Essence was stunned into silence when the girl’s big eyes the color of the forest floor after a rainstorm. She nearly missed the girl’s greeting and stuttered out a response. The flurry of emotions that had just invaded Essence was off putting, and she could do little more than smile and nod as the winged girl said something about paper?
It was only when the girl flounced away down the all that Essence remembered her delivery.