Once upon a time there was a bug who wanted to live on my finger. I called the little fella over and asked him to stay a while. This all started when my father said to never touch a big because it might bite you. After he died, I decided to ask bugs to come over and sit for anhile. It made it easier to think about my sorrow. I named the different bugs, every single one of them. One bugs name was idiot. He sat there as I picked off a wing. The other wing was still there. It...
He set the plate before her. He knew she wasn't hungry but he did it anyway. She didn't mind because she knew he went to a lot of trouble to put this dinner together. She always did all the cooking, he always did nothing. This time he put in some effort and she wanted to reward.
After thinking a moment while simultaneously offering idle, akward conversation, she realized, No, she didn't want this. She always did the cooking because she liked doing. he did this cooking because he felt obligated to. As if somehow performing a task traditionally done by...
Vanquished. Again.
How many times is this going to happen, just in the course of one day? How many times can you suffer defeat at the hands of your enemy? Even if that enemy is your coworker, how can you really stomach it happening over and over?
It's such a small thing, really. Who will empty the trash doesn't seem like something that could cause so much strife, but you're not going to do, and he's not going to do it, and it's just not going to get done. You keep looking up over your desk to see if it's...
Fault. Not a good word. Not a pleasant word. It conjures up the idea of blame. If someone’s at fault, someone’s to blame. The same thing.
Plus it makes me think of faulty. Broken. Useless.
Like you, really. It’s your fault. You’re faulty. It’s not me, it’s you.
I can tell you now I never appreciated the blank stares, the monosyllables, the selfishness, the way you sit there every morning drinking your coffee and reading your paper, or tapping away at your laptop, or doing whatever it is you do with your phone. Facebook, maybe? Or are you on Twitter?...
When represented on a flat surface, a right angle can appear acute or oblique.
Life Drawing
Staring up at me from behind the glass, a mouth that never seems to quite close and two bulbous eyes. They follow my finger as it traces lines up and down the screen, creating bubbles in its wake. My friend, golden scales and graceful fins, swims in his electronic cage, making loops and pinwheeling along with the actions of my moving digit. He doesn't seem to know his home, the aqua-blue paradise of his existence filled with fiery coral, sunken ships, and bright shining trinkets is only a dream - one that is not even his own.
"Should I do it?"
"What if I am found out?"
The struggle raged on in Wendy's head. It had all been too much for her. She had lost her job just the month before. Now she was struggling to keep the strands of life together. There was no food in the refrigerator, bills were piling up, there were too many empty wine bottles and worst of all, her friends no longer called her.
"What can I do," she asked herself. "There's just no other way than this."
Sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the oven, she struggled with...
It was cold, and soulless. It was mechanical, drunken and above all else it was heartbreaking.
I couldn't beleive it when I saw him in the crowd after all these years. The proverbial one who got away. It was even less imaginable that he would be the one to reach out to hold my hand, that he would be the one to pull me into his arms just as our song began to play.
The tickets for this concert cost a fortune, I had stayed up all night just to get through on the phone. I had brought a date...
PUNCH
Graham Pererson was a murderer. He killed people. Often.
Under the guise of a little old man he scoured the late evening streets for his victims. He carried a small bag and a walking stick.
He had a nicely worked out system which had, to date, never failed him.
And so tonight, April 1, he locked his door behind him and headed towards the suberbs.
They were starting to head home in groups of two and three from their nights of debauchery. He hated them. All of them.
A young woman seperated from her group and turned a corner....
"I'm dead, really dead. Not the dead in all those stupid books people read- the kind of dead that means you'll be done in all of five minutes.
I was still waiting for him to return from the store, but I knew he wouldn't.
I heard the crash from the garage, the start up of the chainsaw. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Crying. I had sent the kids to my mother's thankfully.
I heard the basement door open. I waited, alone in the kitchen. I heard the footsteps through the hall. And there he was. Not the man who left, but a...