The ransom never came, poor fools.
The two kidnappers waited with young Jacob Cartee standing between them. The boy looked well, unhurt by the men who'd taken him. That was good. James despised child abusers. "In ten," James said softly, speaking into the mike on his collar.
He shifted his weight, noted the direction of the wind. Slowly, he inhaled as he gazed through the scope on his M99. Time counted down. At "one" he exhaled and pulled the trigger. One of the kidnappers - he'd taken to calling him Ogre - went down instantly. A second bullet escaped the...
It rose. She held his hand and it felt like grass. It was grass between her fingers; but for all she cared at that moment, it was his brown hair.
She had always promised to watch it with him. To let the gold clothe their bodies slowly as they sat together, her tousling his hair. She leaned her back against the cold, flat stone behind her back and stretched her legs.
She smiled. She was happy for the first time in her life. She had fulfilled her duty to him, her last promise. Her head told her she should feel...
Shape. Contour. Line. Plane.
My mind is swimming with terms; it's hard to know where to begin. Think. THINK!
Placing my hands strategically against my forehead, massaging in circular motions, attempting to eradicate the oncoming hangover, I catch a whiff of last night's Sauza and the whole experience comes flooding into self-consciousness. Exactly what I've been avoiding, but it's upon me now, and the midterm examination worth forty percent of my overall grade just doesn't seem quite so vital. By contrast, the almost irresistible urge to vomit has quite suddenly taken me, and now I am reaching for my bookbag...
Nostalgia. Oh, how I love the feeling.
Staring across the dim room at my parent's house is where it began. Noticing the wooden draws that I painted a warm orange in primary school strengthened it. Opening the bottom-left draw, revealing my well-loved Nintendo, Nokia, and iPod is where it ended.
Nostalgia. Oh, how I miss the feeling.
I ran my rough fingers across the chipped edges of my iPod, drumming my fingers across it's back as I remembered the Beyonce songs that would blast through my little ears every night, while singing, or rather, screaming, the lyrics to 'Halo'.
Nostalgia....
Once upon a time there was little man whom no-one believed. His name was Henry, and he loved to go to parties. But when he said he would go, no-one thought he would turn up. And sometimes he didn't believe himself that he would go to the party. One day there was a fancy-dress party at the house of his cousin, the Lady Esmerelda Wallop-Smythe. "I'll be there!" Henry said. "Yeah, in a cocked hat!" said the Lady Esmerelda. So when he arrived in his best britches and dress uniform, he found that he was the only one who had...
His sister was meddling. Always meddling, it never stopped. Turning the milk sideways in the fridge and dumping out the day-old onions. Those were for tomorrow's hot dog.
She caught him. Caught him with his pants down. His figurative pants. It was his hands that were dirty, elbow deep in a sewer - a sick, all too real version of Dirty Jobs. A bad boyfriend, he had three jobs, two girlfriends, and only one sandwich - it was the sandwich that pushed him over the edge. Salami, no cheese - where was that plunger. She knew he had to have...
The dream had been wonderful, yet it would never be real. He lay there in bed trying desperately to fall back into the illusion of beauty he had been so rudely awoken from. He just couldn't get back to sleep.
Sunlight drifted through his open window and explored his room. He watched as dust motes floated around on the breeze, dancing in and out of the rays that had invaded his deep sleep.
A quick glance at the old wooden clock above the door told him he had no time to sit alone and depressed in his bed and long...
The sound reverberated through the streets. Chant. Gregorian. Darkness illuminated by thousands of candles, human snakes weaving their way through the streets. This was the first time I'd visited Taize but knew it would not be the last.
Simon did not feel the same. Hated being surrounded, enclosed by people. Unnerved, anxious clinging onto me like a child instead of a man ten years older.
I felt at one with the crowd, heard the repetetive words flow through me, part of me for evermore. Tried to shrug away the insistent pulling at my coat sleeve, ignore Simon's shout in my...
The street seller heaped chocolate bits onto the thick slice of honey bread spread thick with butter. The boy's eyes sparkled watching the sprinkles flow, not a single one falling off the side of the bread. Hans knew the boy was special and each day would make him smile.
Jan ate his breakfast sitting on the bench by the river, watching the canalboats narrowly miss the larger vessels, he loves the noise and busyness of the city. Unaware he was constantly watched and followed. After wiping fingers on his jeans, he pulled out a sketch pad and rapidly drew the...
It’s like each of our lives is played out alone, obedient to the rules of a separate game board, the ladders, the squares, following the thread of a unique tale, a tail that curls around until it meets up with its maker, its head, forming a neat ball (transparent, weightless), floating effortlessly on the wind, drifting along alongside billions and trillions of other small balls, all caught up in their own complex narratives.
Yet interestingly, while it is easy enough to peer inside each of these other balls as we pass by them, (noting, as we do so, what its...