The room was dark and hazey that morning. Im sure the night before that had been filled with booze, girls and college antics was the cause of the dry, drpessed feeling.
My proffessors voice piecrced like a knife in my skull as he said "You have six minutes to write a story. GO!" My hand gripped the chewed No. 2 pencil as I scramble to write everything about nothing.
My mind raced at the pace of a hungry slug as I stamered to think of somthing to write.
My writing skills are poor, I have limited ideas and my grammer...
She'd always come running when I called especially on the beach after a thunderstorm collecting amber. Knowing that I'd get worried because of the deep rockpools. As this was a different time, after the apocalypse, it was the other way around, she called out to me, worried that as an aging scavenger I'd come to harm on the shoreline each morning.
Keira, my beautiful grand daughter wanted me safe, home in front of the fire reading a newspaper, instead saw me beaten with fatigue, stumbling around the barren landscape hunting for food.
I love her.
"Vanquished, you say?"
He murmured it, holding up the worn little book in the dusty light, crooning to it. He held it gently, but peculiarly—*that* wasn't the way her mother had told her how to hold old books. He held it like a creature, like it was a little, wounded thing in a forest.
She darted back behind the end of the shelf as the strange man stiffened, and held her breath as he slowly turned his head to look down the aisle. His eyes were wrong. His clothing was wrong, too, she knew it was older than it should...
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...
The gate closed behind them. Ahead of them stood the fearsome Morley house, said to be haunted with the ghosts of the former occupants, who had been killed years ago.
Jana, the youngest of the four, turned pale. "Are you sure it's safe to be here?"
The second-oldest, Robert, scoffed, "There's no such thing as ghosts."
"I'm more worried about Dad finding out we're not in bed," Jason, the second-youngest, said.
"You guys are such wusses. C'mon!" Angela, the oldest, ran up the hill to the house, opening the door. As soon as she stepped in, though, she ran out...
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...
As the walked along a long fenced pathway, she told Martin, that she was bringing him to a refugee camp, and that she couldn't tell him what time it is, because no one knows. She handed him a pair of binoculars. "Take these." Martin took the binoculars and she pointed her finger into the snowy distance. Can you make out that small shed out there?" Martin looked around in the distance, but could eventually see the shed she was talking about. "I do." "Listen, Martin, I need you to trust me now. You need to climb that fence, and run...
I...
I...I'm not sure what to say.
Lola.
God. Just the name. Just reading the name - a word, really and I'm gone. Just gone.
Do I actually remember her anymore? Sometimes, I wonder about that. Sometimes I think that what takes me away, what takes all ability to think or feel anything beyond the word, the name - LOLA...isn't really her at all.
There's this insidious thought that it's not her at all, but just what I always wanted her to be. And wouldn't that be the final victory? That I'm tormented by what I tried to make her...
They had come up this mountain every wensday evening for the last three years, from the creation of there IOGT-lodge. The first one in this country and now there outdoor meetings was to come to an end. The lodge house was soon to be finished and there common soberity had a place to live
Indeed in a hundred years another generation will look at this photo and now the story some even beeing related to the heroic pioners of the movement.
How the small movement for soberity started in New York state now lived on and inspired so many generations...
the city was empty
winter empty, not
summer empty
snowstorm home-bound, not
bound for Myrtle Beach, or
flown to Florida or
wherever the hell
the neighbors went.
Christ, doesn't anyone stay
home anymore?
Sit on the deck in frayed nylon
beach chairs?
I can't even find them in
the stores anymore.
what happened?
where did everyone go?
it's the city...
it should
never
be
empty.