Slowly it built, piece by piece. The atoms of its essence compiling line after line, upwards and outwards, exploding into space and time. The building of matter was not easy, but in a sense it was simple. All of it part of a natural system, as light and effortless as the wind around it. Should an ant ever wonder at the workings of its colony, or more likely would it continue on with its pattern. As the structure came together slowly, so did other things. More complicated pieces, wonders ontop of wonders. The chains of DNA and ribonucleotides weaving synonymously...
"Big wheels keep on turnin'..." Paul's hands beat on the steering wheel in time with Lynyrd Skynrd as he drove down the highway toward town. "....A Southern Man don't need him around anyhow!" he sang loudly, dancing in the driver's seat. His dark eyes shone with glee as the music pumped him up. Soon, Paul reached his destination and turned into the parking lot, waiting for the song to end.
Finally, the music stopped and Paul pulled the key from the ignition. Gradually, his heart beat returned to normal and he straightened his red tie and white Polo shirt and...
Gradually.
That was the secret, wasn't it? Build up their trust or indifference, either one would do, like in that fable about the mouse and the lion. First it was hello over the mail as they each made their way back to their separate apartments, next? Why, after months of chit chat, it was coffee shared in the buildings laundrymat. More chance meetings, more talk about incidentals, info on her fake bio. There was no need for him to learn of her unpleasant past. He would only get the wrong idea.
It wasn't really lying, not when she was honest...
Gradually. Ever so gradually, he noticed her work routine. She'd come into the shop below the CCTV camera that gave him his vantage point. She'd stop, check her skirt, then turn and wave. Wave straight at him, it seemed.
Once when he spilt his coffee he swore she looked up, about to greet the camera (or him?) and then the smile vanished. As if she had seen what had happened and was sorry for his stained pants.
In trawling through the back footage, looking for a pattern. Something to identify who had planted the device that had wrecked half the...
The new pope looked down on the moving heads, waving arms, heard the cacophany of sound, brass bands, singing in a multitude of tongues, watched the fluttering flags in the wind, saw the dark sky illuminated by millions of cell phone flashes as his followers took their shot of history. All around the world people watched tv, heard his first words, the blessing, the prayers, the gratitude.
I knew that it was a day most of them would never forget but gradually the magnificence of it would fade in the same way my memories faded of my father, the strong...
He sat in the truck parked on the gravel drive, his arm hanging out the window, a cigarette dangling from his finger. The radio was on and Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses was blaring.
She watched him from the behind the closed screen door.
He lowered the visor so she wouldn't be able to see his reddened eyes. Def Lepard's Pour Some Sugar On Me came on next, and he tweaked the volume nob. He could tell she was still looking at him.
He finished his cigarette and flicked it out the window. He took a long drink from the...
Gradually, the ankle will become the hip, the hip will become the shoulder, because the parts become the whole.
The whole joins to other wholes becoming greater wholes.
Gradually, everything will unconnect, unbecome because of something somebody wrote down in his notebook. As then, gradually, we will reconnect and rebecome.
Gradually, you will realize everything is in your mind and nothing that happens ever happens
"It's meant to get better."
He looked at the empty glass in front of him, studied the bottom, as if it was going to promise him that it would get better.
It didn't. It also didn't refill itself.
"It will."
He glanced up - of course, he could, at least, rely on his best friend.
Well. One of them. Since the other one had -
That glass was still empty. That could cause a problem.
"She's still gone."
"That isn't going to change."
This paticular best friend may prove to be useless - oh, no, wait, he was hailing the...
Gradually, that was how the world where it was okay to be a geek, a fangirl, a dork, herself, came into being.
It started with an acquaintance who knew the animated series who became a best friend.
It grew with a sister who accepted everything and opened her eyes to new worlds.
But it finally became real to her when she met him, the boy who pushed her fringe out of her eyes and led her onto the dance floor when she was sad. Who had moved closer in the fog and who had taken her hand without asking. The...
Gradually. That's what the doctor tells me. Gradually I will get worse. My liver will gradually fail; my arthritis will gradually turn my hands crooked.
So gradually, you mean, I'm dying? Isn't that bullshit? Could there be something worse for me to hear? So gradually since the age of 13, I've been killing myself. That first drink, to the last, I "gradually" ruined my insides? All because my parents failed to tell me what drinking really does to you? So it's my fault that during summers, parties, college, and beyond, that I "enjoyed" my life while ruining it at the...