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...
It was his favourite shirt. But in the rush to leave, it had been forgotten on the line. She stared at it every day from her window. Today it was an especially bitter reminder as she stood at the window, mixing up a batch of cookies.
The cookies were for her son's funeral. The son who had worn that shirt day in, day out, until the day he left. The son who had climbed that tree as a boy, played hide and seek in that yard. The teenager who brought girls home to kiss behind the big tree when he...
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...
I am dancing the night away, now that I can no longer overcome the call of the ocean. She has been wanting me to join me for all my life.
I used to walk on the seaside and feel the pull of the ocean. I always know that my life would one day end in the sweet arms of the ocean. Now as I am here dancing the night away with my true love the ocean, as he left me. He who I thought loved me, but I found in the arms of another woman.
I could not hate him...
Crap, the cafeteria was full again, so full that every table hosted several people sporting laptops and folders busting with papers that spilled out onto each plastic tabletop. Jenny held her tray of food in both hands and sighed heavily. Not a single goddamned place to sit and eat her lunch in peace.
Briefly, she contemplated going to the park bench outside, but the thought of November's chill made her reconsider. The smell of fresh sweet potato fries tickled her nose and made her mouth water. Annoyed but starving, she swallowed her pride and sat cross-legged on the floor against...
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take.
Clearly, it was better not to have to work for such a person. But on the other hand, if he left, he'd be leaving his co-workers to face her incompetence and maltemper himself.
What was he supposed to do? He had "Assistant Manager" on his resume now, it'd be easy for him to find other work. But over the past 6 months, he'd become good friends with a lot of his employees, who were all fun, smart people.
But, but he looked for another job. And he...
We are plagued, wretched, cursed...
doomed to be followed by the multitude, hounded by paparazzi, our flesh peddled to feed the teeming multitudes who wish to consume every morsel of our existence.
Our every action scrutinized, our every facial expression or turn of phrase. Is it any wonder we act so... so... is it any wonder? Put any normal person under this sort of microscope, they would doubtless appear as insane as ourselves.
Of course, there is the whole nasty business of inbreeding. Keeping the gene pool pure? Hardly. Rather limiting it to royalty has caused countless genetic problems; our...
The new pope looked down on the moving heads, waving arms, heard the cacophany of sound, brass bands, singing in a multitude of tongues, watched the fluttering flags in the wind, saw the dark sky illuminated by millions of cell phone flashes as his followers took their shot of history. All around the world people watched tv, heard his first words, the blessing, the prayers, the gratitude.
I knew that it was a day most of them would never forget but gradually the magnificence of it would fade in the same way my memories faded of my father, the strong...
We all have a demon, a monster, something of a dark creature around us.
There are many types of these creatures. They tend to look the same though, darker than the pits of the deepest holes and overwhelmingly dripping of toxicity. Once they have hold of you it is very hard to to get rid of it. There are many different types of these creatures however.
Some make you feel like you’ll never feel happiness.
Some stop you from eating.
Some will pretend to let you feel happy until they let you crash and crack.
Some will make you harm...
Look up and see what's falling. Out of the clouds, the explosion already dispersing on the wind. It seemed almost to be in slow motion. So slow, it could almost be going backwards.
He glanced around and wondered if anyone else saw what he saw. The street went about it's business, as if nothing had happened. He wanted to scream, Look up and see what's falling, but he couldn't push the words from his throat.
The first box hit and exploded only a few feet from where he stood. And another and another again. Explosions all around him, thankfully none...