There's somebody standing in the corner of my room.
Did you not hear me?
Let me say it again.
There is somebody standing in the corner of my room.
A blonde little girl sucking her thumb and staring back at me with these big brown eyes. She wears a ragged green dress that she held fisted in the hand that wasn't in her mouth.
"Hi," she muttered around her thumb. "Someone told me you could help me."
I stared back at her dumbstruck with my jaw on the floor. After I picked it up I asked, "Who exactly are you?"...
He was dressed in green. It made him stand out from all the other people at the beach in their reds and blues, their dark shorts and white vests.
He hadn't intended it as a fashion statement, the green shorts had just been the last ones in the store.
He looked around at the tan, well-sculptured bodies of everyone else on the beach and felt very out of place.
He was not a fan of the outdoors, he had never really even tried it but outside was varying and unpredictable and he just knew by instinct that he wouldn't like...
I had finished drawing. The picture a beautiful representation of her body. I told her that I was done, she decided not to put her clothes back on. I twisted the drawing board around and she smiled. I smiled in turn and told her it was an excellent drawing, and she was an excellent model. She blushed. She said it was my turn and I was confused. She emphasized a bit more and I knew. She asked if I was uncomfortable doing so and I told her no. She took a blank piece of paper. sitting there naked made me...
"Two-thousand-seventy bottles of beer on the wall, two-thousand and seventy bottles of beeeeeer. Take one down, pass it around, two-thousand-and-sixty-nine bottles of beer on the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaall."
Johnny steps down from the stage to thunderous, silent applause. A few faces are comically stunned. Most are arranged in various expressions of disgust.
I'm sure the patrons of the Poet's Society were hoping for better lyrics from the Frontman of the Year. I walk hurriedly to the publicist to begin my explanation. Should I go for the cancer, the break-up, the drugs, or the booze option? I'm sure that's what everyone's thinking anyway....
I step back and look. It seems complete.
Ms. Johnson comes over and looks at it. She barely glances before saying, "Wonderful, wonderful. Fantastic job." She's forgotten my name again. I doubt she'll ever remember.
I leave it on an easel and walk out of the classroom. No one looks back at me. No one calls my name or asks me to meet them at their lockers. I keep walking. Soon I am beyond the reach of our cloistered middle school existence into worlds beyond. High schoolers pass by. None of them look at me either. They have their own...
Some days you feel every second of your age. Becca looked at the balloons in her hand and back towards the building. Seven years hard labor, or so it felt, and she was still working in the same department in the same job for the same company.
A breeze lifted her hair and tugged at the balloons. They struggled against her grip, the ribbons seesawing in her hand as if each wished for freedom.
"What are you doing, Becca?" The voice reached out to her but the woman stared up at the floating orbs. The sun glowed through them and...
Despite the obvious instructions, the young boy turned from the class prompt and began scribbling furiously on the sheet of lined, college-ruled paper. First an eye, then another. Two ears — no, wait, make it three — and a cruel mouth. Fangs and something like a tongue, long and sharp and forked. A ferrety neck protrudes awkwardly into shoulders and a pair of thin, hairy arms extend from these.
He squints with intention, his hand begins hurting from gripping the number two pencil so hard. A messy hand and another goes onto the page. Four fingers on one, three on...
She paced the living room. He would be home soon, and she had no idea how she would answer his keys in the door.
She had spent week thinking of the words, only to lose them now. Her hands were clasped as if praying were something that would work now.
"I have to do this," she thought to herself.
"I have to do this," she said to herself.
The car could be heard pulling into the driveway. A car opens. It shuts.
She freezes. Hands down at her side. She stand amongst their furniture, their pictures, their nick-knacks.
She stands...
"Why the rush?"
A hand grazes the back of my neck, pulling my hair away. Warm breath sticks to the back of my ear and the skin of my neck. I stiffen. That voice is so familiar. I hear a shift to my right and then feel a hand wrap around mine. I jerk it to my side.
"What's the matter?"
I barely hear the words when my body shudders it's disgust. My eyes squeeze shut and I take a step forward. Then two steps. Then three. I don't stop at the door or at the road or anything. I...
Gene loved the smell of leather. He loved the smell of Heather wearing leather. He loved Heather in leather and the smell and the idea of the smell and the smell of the smell always left him crazed and wanting. He couldn't help himself. He didn't know how.
Heather hated Gene. She hated the idea of Gene and the smell of Gene and the smell of the smell of the leather Gene always wore. She had hated him forever. She always would. She could never forgive him for that one thing, years ago. She couldn't even remember anymore. She knew...