"Hello, is this, uh, Mary?"
"Maybe."
"Oh, uh, well I saw your ad and I just thought maybe I had what you're looking for."
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, it just that, uh, I've been working out and, uh, I think I have an okay face and, uh. I can be real mean in bed and stuff."
"What's your name, stranger?"
"My name is, uh, John, and, uh, I'm like 6'3'' and muscular and stuff."
"Well, 'John,' if I was to meet you somewhere, would you be interested in a little... action?"
"Uh, yeah! I mean, that's what I...
I held it at arm's length. The talking cat. No, I'm not insane. It's voice was higher and softer than human of course, but it talked just like the rest of us in English. I did ask if any other languages were known to it, but I was told it had been brought up by a family originally from Wales that had not been allowed to speak their mother tongue in their small village in Somerset.
Bob was it's name. Jet black. Educated, knew far more than me about current affairs, history, geography and was a whizz with the internet,...
The audience stared open mouthed at me. A skinny young woman with short spiked white hair, low cut black top and jeans sat on the red sofa in place of the stuffed panda.
All I'd asked them to do was to shut their eyes for a second. I didn't cover, block or darken any part of the stage. The girl literally appeared from nowhere. Time lapsed before they broke out in wild applause, whistles, foot stamping. I imagined the tweets, Facebook comments, illegal videos uploaded onto the internet, journalists wanting to make their mark with this extraordinary story. Not that...
She'd always come running when I called, well figuratively anyway. The experience of that rush of warmth when her headlights punched holes through those dark and cold nights. The litany of why me questions she'd serve as I kept my hands firmly pressed on the vents to chase away the chill. I'd never known anyone before or since who could shift so smooth. Especially given the roughly 75 scrunchies positioned on the gear shifter.
I would share with her the joys and triumphs of the seventeen year old psyche. Then after waiting out the enevidable diatribe on my selfishness we...
There not much to say about this motorcycle that my grandfather gave me other than it's seen better days. The rust on the sides indicate multiple days and nights spent out in the rain and cold and the headlight is so dim that it must have been years since it's been changed. For me, this bike has no sentimental value, other than the value it's been given by my grandfather. He loved this bike more than anything. He would ride it across the country once every year just to see both coasts and catch up with old friends that he...
Where am I going? thought Harold Sunday as he sped through yet another red light. The intersection blurred behind him, he couldn't believe the sensation of time slowing the quicker he travelled. Marty McFly may have travelled through time in a DeLorean, but Harold blew him away with his long-distance journey in a Ford Focus. It may not have been as snazzy, but at least he could open the doors inside his garage - low ceiling be damned. At first, travelling faster than the speed of sound was disconcerting; his radio wouldn't even work, despite its being inside the car's...
We were to meet in the gallery. The glass one, stone fronted with tiles. It is an old place, no longer fashionable. It looks out onto a street where buses no longer run and rubble fills the roads. He said he had a message to give me. The way it was said, it did not imply that the message was from him, but only that he was a messenger, of the most unwilling kind. What inconvenience it must cause you, I might have argued, to have to meet up with me in such way. What a task your people as...
Running from the larva, Nick wondered if he could stop for a second, catch his breath. He carried on, the survival persona taking over, making him look ahead at the hovering helicopter, knowing his life depended on reaching it...........
This part of the dream would never go away, he'd been recording it for years, wondering what it meant. He'd never been anywhere with a volcano, or any life of death scenarios, or had any worrying health concerns that he could recall.
Every night at three am he would wake, drenched in sweat, shouting out 'wait for me' to the helicopter...
The oil had come months ago now. They had thought it would disappear. It had always done so before.
But it had remained. It had refused to go. It had clung to them, like a desperate duckling clinging to a mother, only this duckling was parasite.
It had tainted them.
There was no escaping it. None whatsoever. They had tried it all, but it followed them. They wore it like a winter coat they had no reason for. It was summer now.
So he had set out, away. That had been his goal at first, but later when he saw...
Sometimes I still feel like a kid - excited about silly things like jumping into puddles, watching how the water splashes out in every direction. It's nice to be the centre of something like that, something movable and real.
Especially now.
I'm so caught up in my own head. I'm worried about disappointing my parents, my professors, myself... it's hard to just live. It's hard to just follow my heart when I'm so concerned with what everyone else wants. The thing is, I don't even think anyone has such crazy expectations for me. My parents just want me to be...