She didn't look at him; she looked past him, half closing her eyes as if basking in the sunlight. She was really trying to cut him from her vision altogether, the better to scry into the future he was pulling them towards. This had been his idea, his romantic idea: "Let's hire one of those rowing boats and take it down the river."
The top of his head dipped in and out of her frame of vision as he pulled them through the water.
"Tell me if I'm going to hit anything," he panted. "I can't see where I'm going."...
A paradigm shift: when you entire worldview changes. When something reaches into your mind and bends the part of your brain that had decided this was how you were going to live your life. You came across something that makes you think. It's impossible to get out of your head and all of the sudden you realize that you are not who you were before; that your life is not going in the direction you wanted it to, but you're okay with that. In fact, you find yourself preferring this new way of looking at life. You realize that the...
The summer was new, the grass was having that wet green quality when it is the first time in a long while the sun have reached it. It is happiness distilled.
They where moving in together, this was the first spring of the rest of their life. It was their love that made them set the mirror down on the grass and frolic in the spring.
Lifes sadness had not yet reached them, they did not know that this spring of love would turn into a winter of despair as they would argue the content of their lifes but somehow...
I remember being that young. They seem to be about the same age that I was when I was engaged to my now ex fiance. We were so hopeful at that age. Thinking that we would take each other by the hand and go through this life sifting through all of its difficulties, learning together how to be separately one. We would hold each other like this young couple is now, tightly, looking out over the night time city lights thinking that we'd find our place somewhere. How wonderful it was. But how much more painful the conclusion to our...
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...
If money was the root of all evil, then wine must surely be a close second.
Jasper gazed through the rosy depths of the wine glass in his hand, observing the scene beyond with quiet detachment. Wine had always mellowed him, left him with a feeling a pleasurable distance from his surroundings, as though nothing that happened would effect him at all. He remembered his girlfriend's anger at his apparent coldness when she informed him of her condition, the way she had yelled and screamed and beat her fists against him as he silently took in her news, analysed the...
The water was clear, so I stared at it, looking at my reflection. I was ugly, there were no two ways about.
She had been right.
I kept staring at myself. The disfiguring scar curved an unappealing path through my cheek. My hair was matted with dirt and dust. I wasn't even handsome in a macho kind of way, like someone who had just emerged from a bout with a bear.
She had been right.
My eyes were red and puffy with tears. My lips were chapped and sore. When I ran my tongue over them, they felt sharp and...
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...
I found the ring on the bowling green. Slipped in my back pocket for later as I was in the middle of the tournament. Forgotten after the many rounds of congratulatory drinks. Left on the bedroom chair at night. Fallen out in the morning and rolled under the bedcovering to be found by a very suspicious wife the following day.
She didn't believe my explanation - that I had no idea where it had come from. Her catalogue of resentments opened and recited in a monologue, devoid of tone or expression. I packed my suitcase and went to stay with...
A figure made of darkness, shadow. Silent. As I try to ignore my phantom I diligently type at my keyboard, words flow, meaningless and easy. This job is slowly driving me mad. I shiver and tell myself it has nothing to do with the shade silently observing me. How could it? There is no shade. If I were to turn, look directly at it, that would be the end. Or the beginning I suppose, rather depends on how you look at it. The end of sanity, the beginning of full fledged madness. How many years have I struggled to ignore...