She'd have preferred the electric chair as a pendant to the cross which she now wore around her neck. Who was it who said if Jesus was killed nowadays little Catholic girls would all be wearing electric chairs instead of crosses? But she had to wear it; Grandma was coming to Sunday dinner and the family was big on making a half-assed show of religious values. Not like anyone even went to church anymore unless Grandma was around. Nellie flipped her hair in the mirror and made a face, then went downstairs to where the rest of the family was...
Jane was only footsteps away from the door. She was within earshot of the rest of her existence. She took 3 cleansing breaths, as she had in yoga, time after time after time. But this time, this time would be the clincher. She was coming in and out of consciousness now as she heard the voice. The Voice of her alter ego. Her Fear.She called her Safura after a Western Bad guy she use to see on Kung Fu. Safura was calling her to come back.Come back to Fear, Come back to pain, come back to the land without compassion....
The room faded away around her, the bed, the dressers, the walls and windows, disappeared, faded out, until the only thing he saw was her standing there. A sheet twisted demurely around her body. Hair falling haphazardly. Chin tucked in slightly, eyes looking up and beckoning with each slow flap of her eyelashes.
Nothing else existed, just her and him and the unbearable distance between them.
The sheet shifted, her leg emerged, bent at the knee. She spun slowly to face him. Walking forward, unbuttoning his shirt, kicking his shoes off and into the white void surrounding them.
The emptiness...
A heart is a beating machine. It's an organ, it's a force beyond all reckoning.
The doctor will now see you," said the nurse in all white.
I glared, knocked over my coffee and walked behind her, moving towards my fate. I would hear that my beating heart skipped beats-a heart murmur. Murmur echoing in my head. Mumu-a dress I wore in Hawaii as a young girl. My mother was in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked.
The doctor was in the room before I was. Is this a good sign. He's anxious to tell me my heart will explode....
"There," said Asad. He pointed to the horizon, his eyes crinkled with nostalgia. "That's where I saw her for the first time."
I followed the direction of his outstretched finger. The ocean was cold and dappled by the late afternoon sunshine peering through the clouds. It seemed vast and endless, and I was overcome by the urge to laugh at him.
"How can you be sure of where you saw her? This is the goddamn ocean. It all looks the same!"
"No." He shook his head, a firm, decisive movement. "I know. That is the place where we met. The...
There was blood on my pillow. Prom tomorrow and I was still bleeding from the tooth extraction. Four wisdom teeth removed. And I was off to prom.
My date was an ex-boyfriend. We were desperate for the quintessential high school experience. Desperate enough to hook back up again.
My dress was a hand-me-down. Less Pretty in Pink and more High School Reunion. I didn't know how to sew, so all I could do was attempt to cut off the ruffles. Blue taffeta--not my best color.
The handbag was from my grandmother. White sequin and plastic pearls. I tucked the syringe...
She hated when people asked where she came from. She didn't like dwelling on the past, or for that matter, thinking of it at all.
The past made her feel weak, vulnerable. She loathed feeling that way.
She wasn't weak, like her mother. Her mother stayed with him to rot.
But not Laura, she got out as soon as she could. As far away as she could from him, the man that had the nerve to call himself her father.
He was evil, he was a monster that haunted her dreams, she hated him. Him and his "holier then though"...
"Wait, so he hit you? Why?" Great question. I have no freaking idea. I was just walked to my truck, minding mine, and then...whap! Now, it's a good thing my upper body is made of pure steel, or else it would have hurt. As it were, the punch just bounced off of me. Actauklkly, the man whp pnche dme broke his hand. I heard the snap of the bones and then the screams of pain. At thuis point, let me back up a bit. You see, it was the first day that McDonald's had stopped using its pink slime in...
There was blood there. On her hands and arms. The dress was white once. White as her bridegroom's teeth.
For the family and for honor. For her grandmother and grandfather. Never for her. Nothing for her.
The wedding was special. The whole family came to see Chi Ling marry into what was the richest family in Beijing. Such an accomplishment. They complimented her mother and her father for making the match. Mounds of food decorating the reception hall. Her family got drunk on wine while his hid behind their paper fans, whispering that he'd only married her because her family...
They had only met a through days ago through the happy coincidence that they were staying at the same hotel on the same island at the same time. They had met at a bar, neither their friends back home would be surprised by that fact, and had become fast friends.
Gloria was twenty-one, a full time secretary who was travelling alone, just needing to escape the soap opera of a life she had back home.
Mallory was a second year student, on holiday with her mother, step-father and three much younger half-siblings. She had been relieved to find a kindred...