"I can't write something like that" I said gruffly.
It was in the darkened room as I stared upon the sunset of the days of the world.
"What are you talking about?" said the 2nd person in the room.
"Me" I said
"Just go with the prompt" said Darrin, the 3rd person.
"Okay" I sighed.
"Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway, clutching a Tec-9 in each hand. She kicked the door open and let loose a barrage of bullets. A hail of gunfire, proceeded by a red mist of blood. She went...
The wolf had finally lost her, but she had lost the basket of goodies for her grandmother, and the old woman only had until sunset before she would pass away.
Red got up and dashed through the shining, wet streets, knocking into people without pardoning herself all the way, desperate to get her hands on something, anything, that she could bring to her grandmother.
Then she saw it: Me Hing Shao Pun: the Wolf's Garden, a restaurant that had opened up in the house her grandmother had been born in. The wood frame exterior was dark, a rusted loudspeaker warbled...
Once, in Beijing, you were there. You were here. Doorway. Phone. Stammer.
She clutched round her that red gown, shawl over shoulders, and stood. Stands?
I am across the street, with you. Table. Café. On the table: phone, keys, change. Two glasses.
One and a half minutes ago, I hit "record" on the phone and slid the phone toward you. Between you and me.
You cleared your throat, and said:
Once, in Beijing, you were there. A young girl, a gown too big. You saw a couple across the street. One older, thin, thin-lipped, a look of resignation. One younger,...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She was tired - her mother had been taking her from door to door all morning looking for ... what exactly? She wasn't sure, but she knew more than her mother thought she did. She watched the kids play who weren't her.
She was the product of two Peace Corps volunteers, and this adventure teaching English in China was the next step. AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, MercyCorps, and now the less valiantly named R4 English Tutoring. She should have been starting second grade this year, but she...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
After a carefully judged amount of time she stood up and retied the bow at her waist.
"Sure, you stood me up at prom, Adam," she said, "but THIS is for calling my dissertation 'feeble-minded and a stunning waste of recycled pulp' in front of my advisor."
She retrieved her bike and stuck a hardbound volume titled "AN OPTIMIZED PROGRAMMABLE BINARY ARCHITECTURE FOR A SCALABLE DIGITAL THEOREM ITERATOR" into the handlebar basket.
Then, whistling, she hiked up her skirts, straddled the seat, and biked off into...
Tears dripped down her cheeks. She was alone. Finally, sadly, happily alone.
Her husband was searching for her. She prayed that he would not find her. She had managed to escape her home while he searched for weapons to use against her. When he stomped towards the kitchen, dripping angry sweat and hurling abuse, she thought of the knives.
She didn't remember how she got between her home and the doorway. All she knew was that she was safe, for the time being.
Where next? She had no family. Her friends were his friends or the wives of his friends....
Once in beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, studying the minute details of the back of her scull, while her mind twisted through the rails of reality.
One moment Beijing, 2010. The next moment Cairo in the 1940's, then London in the Victorian era, fast as electricity moved down her synapses and shattered through her mind, she was gone again. The great australian plains. The Transiberian Rail. The nineteen hundreds, the dark ages, the Triassic period, the great black wasteland that existed before existence, and in...
"Hmm, urg, turn down the heat," he thought to himself as his attention turned to the pain in his armpits and ankles. "Who jumped me?" He thought, before he realized he'd soon pry open the almost necrotic lids of his gummed up eyeballs.
it occurred to him that a lot had already transpired that day, and he was just getting started. He looked out the window and hurried to the kitchen, then started heating up some coffee. Then he rustled up the morning paper and, fuzzy eyed, stared at it without much comprehension.
His companion hadn't gotten up yet, so...
I took a ball, and threw it against the brick wall, to have it bounce back. I threw it again and again, to have it come back, back into my hands. I thought about my decisions, about how I threw away my future, and my life. He told me to do it. I know he did. I blame myself, not him. I threw the ball again, and heard the loud crack of it bouncing of the wall. When I hurled it the next time, I threw it as hard as I could, and rocketed back to me, through my legs,...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She held a bowl in one outstretched hand. Her eyes were studying the gravel on the road, not rising to the gaze of passersby who occasionally dropped a coin into her bowl. Her mother was dead, her father was missing, she had no siblings that she knew of, she had only a red gown and a bowl. When the bowl filled with money at the end of the day, as it often did, she would take it to a nearby shop and exchange it for rice...