She adjusted her collar, the mic hidden surreptitiously behind the pearly buttons. Her career was waning to the point were SNL parodies portrayed her as a confused old hag and the use of her name was synonymous with the people she had worked hard to objectify. She had once sparred with Palin, but was now firmly under the Madame President's heel.
"I can take you away from here," the apparition wavered into view. The faint scent of lavender and soft scratch of lace on silk pervaded the air. "Ma chèrie, souvenez vous la contracte?"
The audience stared open mouthed at me. The excitement of their shock rippled and fizzed through me as I beamed at them, arms spread wide.
I'd been acting in the same play for what felt like aeons and it had begun to wear on me. Each line felt like a chore and I had said so to a friend of mine over coffee.
"Do something new, then!" he'd said, "Do something exciting!"
I'd pondered this suggestion as I dragged myself into my costume. The most wondeful idea hit me and acted my part better than I ever had before, buzzing...
Leave me behind as you do is because of my fault. The fault you saw in me is the one you said you'd fix, it's the fault you spoke to me about while we sat on the bus, and I still had a smile, and a home, I still had ambition and curiosity as to where I belonged. I sat and stared out the spotted window and saw a man on a bicycle, and the bicycle made a sound both wooden and metallic against the side of the bus, and the lump under the wheels did not come with the...
He watched from a distance, hidden behind a bush. The two tigers snarled at each other, circling around, judging each other's strengths, weaknesses. His camera was held up to his eye, and the only part of his body were his fingers: depressing the shutter, muffling the click, repeat. They were magnificent creatures and couldn't have been more than three years old. Most likely this was their first time encountering another, hostile male. This would be the fight where they proved their worth. Maybe they were fighting over a girl, the age-old battle. But msot likely it was territory: this is...
He ran in the room, his heart pounding, and his clothes soaking wet. A man was sitting across the room in a fat leather chair, the kind you see CEOs with. His back to the sopping boy.
The boy stood panting with his back against the door, his eyes closed and his head tilted at the ceiling. "S-sorry. I ran into some trouble on the way here."
With every drop of water that landed on his carpet the man cringed. He could hear it ruining the material. He took a deep breath, "Please, have a seat."
With complete disregard for...
The moon hung low in the sky, big and fat it was, looking down at us with an air of disapproval. As well it might given what we were up to. Burglary. Nasty business really, but needs must an all that. It had been Jack's idea, as were they all. He was the brains of the organisation, and what with him being the biggest and all, it would have taken a braver man than any of us to stand up to him and say no. That's how we come to be crouching in the bushes outside Millie's house.
'Ready, lads?'...
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...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. It was not that she was frightened - no, fear was something she found rather useless - but because she knew with an unshakeable certainty that if she wandered onto the street, she would be eaten by a vampire.
The house beyond the doorway was no better, on account of there being a ghost lurking inside, the type that would drip ectoplasm on her most horribly before devouring her soul.
This girl, then, was at an impasse. She could neither proceed nor retreat. Go out, the...
I shot my butler.
No, actually, I did.
Yea, I know what you're thinking. "This lady's crazy if she's just gonna write about shooting her butler as if it's no big deal. She's probably writing from jail."
Well, I'm not in jail. He's actually fine. It was just.... In the craziness of that day... I didn't even know it was him. One minute there was no one there but the smoke in my eyes and screams in my ears, and the next moment I had a gun in my hand and there was the butler. He took a step toward...
The disco ball was turning and I was sweating profusely as I danced amidst the twitching light that captured each person's movements frame by frame. My arms flailed in the air, pointed straight up in the chilly night while my torso shook from side to side.
And we were all dancing like this, without a care beneath the stars shimmering against the pitch black sky where the moon was covered in a thin veil of condensed water and soon, we believed, we would all condense up like if we were to stop our apparent motion.
We'd all freeze because we...