We never spoiled that. We visited it, claimed it, and then we left it as is. We may not have meant to, but we did. We left something alone.
She smiles through her bleeding gums and plucks some more skin from her face, just to pass the time. She was young, so she'll last a little longer than the others. But in a day or two, it'll all be over. That tree won't last long either.
But the moon is still the same as it ever was, save for a few bits of scrap and a flag.
The sheep were at pasture.
It was 0300 and the troops were restless. They wanted action, not this placid chewing of grass. Every day was filled with nothing but chewing and the occasionally terrifying sheering.
The ones that came back from the shed came back wrong. Nude and shivering, wild looks in their eyes. Year after year. Jimmy couldn't take it anymore. When they came for him the last time, he ran for it. He chewed and bit and growled his sheep growl.
He didn't come back. That night they looked in when they saw the soft lights come on...
Ridiculous. Absurd. Absolutely and beyond all normal standards of decency, indecent. That was how I looked in the mirror the morning that I discovered my first gray hair. Or was it my third. I was faced with the overwhelming reality of a head of lustrous, youth-infused auburnness marred by the upright and wiry soldier who insisted on taking up some precious real estate in my brain that could have been much better utilized by a sudoku puzzle or a cure for cancer. How were things now to possibly proceed in a direction other than graveward? What was the sense in...
The poor thing had followed a Marine from the wharf to the deck of the aircraft carrier; someone had put a leash on it and of course he was named Devil. He was the mascot for the Bravo Company and even the officers pretended not to see. And even if the Sailors had said anything, a Marine or twenty would have made sure they forgot, quick.
Devil Dog was a mutt, a half-starved thing that a Marine on leave had tossed a bit of bread at, to impress the pretty Australian broad on his arm. The Marine didn't get the...
She bent down to tie her shoe as the sun was setting. The reflection of the pinkish-yellow ball was right in front of her at the edge of the lake. The pebbles beneath her feet were wet and smooth. The umbrella she brought with her, still resting on her beach towel by the tree.
With many thoughts in her head, Chelsea folded up her umbrella and tucked it beneath her arm, rolling up her damp towel and stuffing her towel into her drawstring bag.
Today was a good day, she thought. She could get through this day. Days at the...
The summer was in full swing, but since all his friends were out of town, it has been mostly television for him. His mother couldn't stand him in the house any longer, so she sent him grocery shopping. While browsing through the various different magazines at the counter, he noticed a couple of guys from school heading towards him, smiling. Though two of them were in his Spanish class, he had never spoken a word with them before, so he was more than surprised when they invited him to a party at the beach that evening. But parties weren't really...
If you really knew me, you'd find I hate cinnamon; the smell, the taste, everything about it. I've never tried a brussel sprout and I would say my favorite food are hot dogs, even though they aren't so good for you. If this were a book about my life, I could tell you I've lived in NY my whole life, and just recently I want to move; the winter used to be one of my favorite seasons, and now it's just too cold to bear. If we just met and you asked my favorite color, I would tell you pink...
Light. It was painful to look at; my hangover was tremendous. My hair was matted to the side of my face, and my pillowcase had collected all of the eyeliner I had on from the night before.
It was December 4th. I was 18. I had no idea how I got back into my bed from the previous night. I had lost my keys. I was spitting out blood. I was supposed to go to Toronto on a shopping trip that day.
I went. I felt dead. I caught pneumonia from being outside in December with hardly any clothes on....
I'm in love with a robot. She doesn't have a physical presence, she's not some pile of servos shipped from Japan. She's an AI, the product of decades of research and development -- using tens of millions of online conversations as a template for her personality.
I know people tell me that she just scours all my emails in an effort to become what I like, and I know people tell me that she's nothing more than a neural network backed by a huge database. But is that so different from a human brain?