The explosion knocked her off her feet and sent a ringing through her ears. She felt the world going black.
When she came to, she got up and looked around. the bathroom was in shambles. the spotted mirrors were shattered all around her on the floor. one of the stall doors had been blown off. She rose to her feet, brushed herself off, and started through the halls, looking for her friends. She walked through the ruins of her school for nearly an hour, finding nothing but the dead. She heard footsteps and ran for the source. She ran smack...
She had made her bed and she now had to lie in it: that was what her mother had told her and what she now believed. So she was lying in it, like a good little girl – meek and mild, silent and compliant: behaviour that had got her to where she was now – unhappy, stuck, unravelling. Because old habits die hard, you see, and it is difficult to change. How does one forget three decades of learned behaviour? How does one peel off and discard the labels people attach? They don’t, that’s how, because they can’t – not...
You get so used to one set of reality that you don't really consider that another one could exist.
Which is a very pretentious way of saying that feelings change without us even noticing it.
It's only when I'm reminded of the intensity of feeling that I notice that I am simply not feeling it anymore. What once felt like lifeline and lifeblood is now just a passing memory. A potentially entertaining thought process, but not worth obsessing over. Barely worth my time.
It's simultaneously comforting and distressing, to know that such intensity can be felt one moment but in...
The daring were punished. Oh, how they were punished. For their transgression of assumption: public mockery. For their foolish hubris in believing that one could get away with such tom foolery: A dressing down by the town jokesman (and I use jokesman loosely as anyone in town would and will tell you that he was only installed as the town jokesman thanks to nepotism. After all, it's his father who is in charge of humor.
Yes they were a sight to see, the daring. The sad faces of such dissapointment as you would assume most of them saw some sort...
It never quite made sense to me, but maybe it's not supposed to. Here, my heels. There, my toes. One to the other and one to the next, and this is called walking. And this way it's called dancing. And this way it's called running.
And stand right here and feel the water, cold and cold and cold and squirming I reemerge, my breath barely able to contain my laugh.
And here are stockings, they go on like this, bunched and then stretched until the legs are consumed. "Oh no, it's up to my toe," I'd sing, remembering. "Oh, gee,...
I am different.
I know it.
They know it.
They being society.
In our society, we are to dress the same, act the same, our names are the same, and the only thing different about us is our eyebrow angles. Strange, isn't it? I know there are a few like me in the world, but I don't know where. When I was very little, my parents lived on the edge. They would be different, and the society would scold them. When I was three, they were to be killed. Before my parents died, they decided they wanted me to stand...
Until now, she'd never thought of herself as pretty. And, if she was honest, she still didn't. It wasn't her mind that had changed. It wasn't even thhe mind of the world in general. Just the rather pleasant opinion of one particular man who she had met while walking into town. He had caught her eye as she passed, caught her hard and fast in fact. She was forced to an abrupt halt, staggered by it's impact. Not unpleasant, mind. Gentle, but admiring. There was power in that. He had looked and smiled and then complimented her on her looks,...
The room was dimly lit with the candles he had scattered before she had arrived. The meal would be served in just a few minutes, a creation to do any chef proud. He had left the wine to breathe the required amount of time. The stage was set. He set the plate before her and frowned when she showed no sign of appreciation for his efforts. He poured her a glass of wine, an excellent vintage. Still, she showed no joy or surprise.
He batted the wineglass away and it shattered on the far wall. With a swipe of his...
In hindsight, the solution was obvious. They had sat there for nearly half an hour, staring up at the stars. She'd tried to figure out why he was so quiet. He'd picked her up at 7, right on time, survived her dad's "look of death", and taken her out on the river in his boat. Now, sitting on the little sandbar, the remains of their picnic sitting in the basket beside him, he'd gone silent. She wondered if she'd said something wrong, something that made him regret ever asking her out in the first place. Or perhaps he was bored;...
The spotlight travelled the circumference of the room in search of a victim, looking to curb its own discomfort by persuading the unwanted attention on to another. Beneath its bright glare the chosen individual trebled and froze, as if caught in headlights. Then, becoming aware of the line of eyes, the press of bodies – waiting, watching, for her to spring into action, to move, to come alive – she lifted her arms, stretching them out, inhaling deeply.
Her performance opened with a slow dance, the words of a song low and soft on her breath, barely above a whisper....