It was inexplicable that two latino, hipster twenty-somethings from East Los Angeles would talk like 85-year-old Jewish retirees from Queens, yet that was how it was.
"Pull ovah and ask fuh direck-shuns," shouted Isabel.
"I know where I'm going!" Ricky replied with a Yiddish accent that seemed to come from nowhere. "You always do this! You always want to undermine my AUTHORITY!"
He exclaimed very loudly, mostly because he was hard of hearing and couldn't monitor his own pitch. Isabel was silent for a second, silently mouthing words to herself. Then, as if in an afterthought, she said, "You just...
My grandma had this incredible house. Like one of the ones you see in movies. Like, this is going to be a really crazy example, but did you ever see "The Tigger Movie"? Like Winnie the Pooh. There's this part where they're in the attic and I always remember wishing we had an attic with all that cool old stuff to explore in our house. Then I found Grandma's attic and I knew I'd hit something special! There was actually a stand-up mirror covered in a sheet and a few large trunks full of old clothes! So great.
I think...
Martin put the off-white china mug to his thin lips and took a long drink of his rapidly cooling coffee. His eyes scanned over the classified ads for the hundredth time but, once again, there was nothing. Nothing in his field, nothing in his area, nothing, nothing, nothing. The pen poised in his right hand tapped against the page angerly and he took another mouthful, swishing the lukewarm liquid between his cheeks.
"Good morning, pumpkin." Candice's bare feet padded along the bare hardwood behind him, and Martin soon found his girlfriend's arms wrapped tightly around his chest, her face buried...
It was really just a matter of survival. Keep going and keep going and eventually, soon if they were lucky, they would reach a village, a town, a bloody great city with skyscrapers and McDonalds and satellite TV. All right, maybe that was taking things a bit far, pushing their luck to the extreme, but it was a beautiful daydream.
"You all right back there?" called Hitesh loudly, despite his cracked, dry throat, trying to make himself heard over the rushing, roaring river that the canoe was racing along.
Ash nodded, realised Hitesh couldn't see him, and carefully leant forward....
Tom said my neck tasted of honey. When I told Jasper he laughed hysterically, dropping the crystal glass of champagne onto the thick white carpet. Snorting like a horse, slapping his black Parisian jeans, contorting his face like a fairground mirror image. I didn't think it was so funny but didn't say anything. I laughed too.
One thing that Jasper would never know about me is how lonely and disgusted I feel with myself when I tell him about Tom.
When I walked away from the car, turned back and waved at Tom who had wiped the condensation from the...
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...
"Peasants," he thought, and stuck his pitchfork into a square of hay.
"What do they know about building a good, angry mob?"
He hoisted the bale onto a workbench and began teasing handfuls of straw out, putting them in neat piles.
He came from a family of mob organizers and leaders. Three generations of good, strong men who knew how to lead a group of frothing townsfolk up mountain passes, across fields and to the front gates of witches, evil doctors and foreign-born ne'r do-wells.
The secret to a good mob was in staying organized. Make sure everybody's got something...
Thou wanted to enjoy his iced latte
Thou wanted to bring the mood down in this joint
Thou wanted these tourists to be gone
Be gone tourists!
Thou forsakes thee!
Tourists
Poseurs
Wanna bees
Beardos
Thou is the grumbly heart of your demise
Thou is real
Really real
So frightening
So fucking real
Thou is not on tourist maps
Pamphlets
Brochures
Thou will burn away all this fake tourist bullshit
Thou will bring the mood down
in
this
joint
In the harsh twilight, he knelt and dug.
In the bottom of the phoenix-grave, he spread the spores that would feed on and support the beginnings 0f all life.
In the sharp, glassy soil, he placed the seeds of a new planet.
In the unmeasured, empty space of an hour, he changed the course of the universe.
In the flat gray expanse of weathered silicates, three thousand potatoes rested.
In the dead methane-carbon dioxide atmosphere, the harsh actinic sun slanted down, undimmed by ozone.
In the cool, moist air of his time machine, he left the dawn of the world,...
Ceci n'est pas un garçon.