The lead ninja laughs. "You are a fool, Senzi," he says through his mask. "Never make a boast that you cannot back up with action!"
They have me surrounded, five on each side, and one nimbly crouching on the tracks behind me, ready to leap away once the train came too close. I had no such route to safety; the points of their katanas promised a quick death should I stray from the rails.
All I have is my own katana, and my pride.
The ninjas continue to mock and jeer. I will be dead in seconds, they think. I...
He ran into the room, his heart pounding, and his clothes soaking wet. "What happened?" we asked. He regained his breath, swallowed hard, and began. "Darryl was found on the beach. He's dead." he said. Everyone gasped. Only Delta was calm. She sat casually on her chair and said, "Well, he got what he deserved, then, didn't he?" Everyone looked at her in disbelief. "Delta! How could you say that! Darryl's dead!" Evelyn said, her hands flying up to her mouth. "And it's great! that snake of a man got exactly what he deserved." Delta said haughtily, standing up and...
As a child my Mother has always told me to make something of myself. She'd push me into doing things I really did not want to do.
"Learn the piano!"
"Take up dance!"
"You will act!"
Order after order. I wasn't any good at any of it really. So I just gave up quietly in my mind and pretended to care.
For Mother there wasn't any point in just being alive.
"You must be living!" she'd shout whilst doing something boring and mundane like peeling an onion.
I didn't get why she was so determined that I do something. I...
"Everyday has promise."
"Everyday?"
"Yes, everyday."
"Well it seems that the first day of the year has more promise then the rest."
"I suppose but I will certainly take it as a good sign that you are at leasting embracing the possibility of promise."
"I am sorry for so much, life as usual, for far too long." She looked at him then. It had been so long since she heard something deeper in his words then the surface of day to day. He didn't see her looking of course. His eyes were on the news so she turned back...
He looked into the surface and his heart stopped a beat, two beats then three at what stared back. His chest caved inwards as a slow smile stretched and rippled across a paler face than his own. The eyes were grim and long and dead and they beat him into submission with a starving stare before he kicked his own ankle and fell to the ground, dirt scraping pits into the palms of his hands. He licked his lips and looked above about him. The roof of the hut looked like the inside of a boat falling from the sky...
Millions spent on public health are inflationary. This is why we should kill people when they're born. That's right. When a baby is born, you flip a coin. If it comes up heads, kill it. That's what they do in China, only they don't flip a coin. They say if the baby has a vagina, kill it.
And this is a little creepy for a six minute story, isn't it? I got the first line by opening a Kurt Vonnegut book to a random page and writing down the first line I saw. Everything flows from there.
The word flow...
All this chicken wants is a hamburger. Nothing fancy, just meat and cheese. Maybe lettuce and tomato. That's it. Really, I don't think that's much to ask for. Is it?
Here's the problem. The road won't let me do it. The cows are relatively fine with it. Not happy, but they've at least come to understand that I'm going to eat them.
The road, on the other hand, is not happy at all. You see, the road has it in it's head that its reason for existence is to protect the cows. The cows can't see the danger and incowity...
"Goddamn it." This is what the cop said when the door first opened.
"It's not what you think. I can explain. See, we were playing a game. Hide and seek sort of thing, and things got a little out of control." He mumbled and shuffled, which the cop always took as a sign of guilt.
"Okay, we need to get him up off the floor. An ambulance is on its way. And you --" The cop pointed at the mumbler. "You need to come with me."
Mumbler shrugged and kicked at the table leg. "I didn't do anything. It was...
Bocci. Bocci ball. Bowling on a lawn. That's what I was doing in that old photo. But strange. Usually you bowl with other people. Usually there's markings on the ground, a target ball to shoot from. In the photo, I'm just standing there in the middle of the lawn, facing the house. My house? God, I don't know whose house that is. It could be a field house, or a club house, and I'm playing bocci, a game I don't know how to play, have never, as far as I'm aware, ever played before in my life, and I'm hunched...
It was him. even now my breath drew short as I thought about it, all the things he used to do, all the million little ways that he would never let anything go, every little rumer that he spread or whisper behind my back.
Richard Delany had just walked into my board room. Mine.
I saw him look up and I know that he recognised me, I wished that I had chosen to wear the stilettos this morning instead of the practical comfortable shoes that are my fail safe whenever I know I am going to be in long meetings...