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.
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....
How endlessly the ocean seems to stretch out over the horizon. It never ends as it drifts beyond view, but you and I both know that even though it continues further than our sight, it will go on to find its end at some far off beach on some other continent. There, someone will stand at it's shore and look out the way that we are now and make the same observation. We will then be the ones that cross their minds as some strangers with our toes in the sand, creating some cycle of perception of one another. I...
You had me at 'ox bow lake'. But the time machine accidentally switched itself on and didn't stop until I was back in 2012 where I started. I spent months in regret afterwards, looking online at the black and white photos of you with the rest of your Native American tribe, uncomfortably posed for the camera. I could not mend the glitch in the machine, could never return to a life with you. Sometimes I spend time with your ancestors, I have made friends with little Jimmy, your great great great grandson. I can imagine that he could have been...
The air was crisp and cold the morning of the discovery. Shouldering his way through the greeness, he hugged his pack to him.
Anthony had just left home on his first journey into adulthood. Every Minor on their 18th birthday had to venture into the world and bring back something from the world of the big humans.
Branches scratched at him, thorns stuck him, but he was determined. Just something in his gut told him that his worthiness was in this direction.
Suddenly the trees parted and beyond them was a great depression in the woodlands, and in its...
When represented on a flat surface, a right angle can appear acute or oblique.
I tried to avoid holding the parcel knowing what it contained but had to or else it would look suspicious. I know that Tom would be eager to open the well travelled box wrapped in thick brown paper covered in butterfly stamps and tied up with old string, secured with a familiar wax seal. He would probably visualise his wife dipping the wax stick in a candle, waiting for the melting to begin, carefully dropping a few blobs in the right places, hoping to avoid burning her fingers.
Wanda of course did not put lovingly baked cakes and pies into...
"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...
She walked slowly, the sound of her shoes crunching the leaves beneath her. Her dark, brown curls fell on to her shoulders, and her snow-white skirt blew in the wind. To a passer-by, she was simply a stranger. A beautiful stranger, in fact, but in reality, her soul was darker than the night of a new moon. Nobody knew what she had done. The cute, innocent farm girl was not as virtuous as she seemed.
It's easiest to appreciate simple beauty when you are surrounded by desolation.
Peace had finally settled over the dusty streets, and the small unit of American soldiers let their guns droop, looking up the hill at the kids who had cautiously come out of hiding to wander the streets once more, seeking their friends just as the soldiers reunited with their brothers in arms under a leafy tree. One adorned with freshly bloomed pink flowers.
A soldier smiled as he looked at the plants. Long gone was the time where it had been considered unmanly to like flowers. Pretty pink...