There was a stage. A microphone. A guy with a guitar and another at a piano. One spotlight trying to mark out everything up there and missing the edges. And that was it. If the audience in the jazz bar had been expecting anything more, anything grander or, well, jazzier, they were disappointed. Most were. It was a good place to be disappointed in.
It was a good place to spend money when it had nowhere else to be spent too. That’s mostly what these people were doing. Spending money that they didn’t know what else to do with. Spending...
she kept bird feathers in an old mason jar beside her bed. every night she would pick one, and blow sweet, freshly toothpasted air through the meat of it. sometimes dust would fly away with the wind, other times a few clingy strands of the feather would lazily float through the air. every morning, she would pick one, and slowly stroke her face with it, making soft rotations until she felt alive again. she says it stopped the dreams from coming real. one day, i worked up the nerve to ask her, "how do you pick the feathers you do?"...
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs.
"Did that blade seriously just nick my ankle?"
Brody grabbed a stalk of grass and shook it in front of the step. A pair of scissors lashed out and bisected the leaf and receded into obscurity.
"It looks like Jiro's back." Myka pulled a long, desperate drag out of her cigarette. "Looks like the girlfriend thing didn't work out."
"Maybe the booby trap is to keep people out as they get it on." Brody coughed as Myka exhaled a noxious cloud in his face.
They skipped the step and carefully ascended the stairs...
The shoes, they won't stop calling out to me. I walk down the road, in the rain, or even in the snow, and these peachy shoes, with the thin straps that wrapped perfectly under my ankles, they keep whispering.
I bought them discounted over on 16th, at that shoe warehouse place (my sister used to call it the shoe whorehouse, because that's what we'd do to get the money to buy in there, well not really, but almost) and I saw them on the shelf one early Saturday. The shop was empty. These shoes, they called out to me. Buy...
No shoes or socks in the snow, JaKK was only focused on finding the settlement. Escaping was the easy part, finding his family might be hard. Physical discomfort was not part of his programming, his body able to withstand any extremes of temperature.
The scientists had made them. Fed them. Studied them. Experimented on them. Killed them. Few were left.
After two days he was still beside the forest, the neverending trees.
He might be alone. Lost.
But for the first time in his existence.
He was free.
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room.
Well, "standing" may be the wrong word. There's someone IN the corner of my room. The lights are off; only moonshine streaming through the window above my bed gives shape to the darkness there. It's bulky; that much I know. It's BIG, bigger than me. The size of its shadow dwarfs my small frame, or would anyway, if I dared move from beneath the covers of my linen sheets.
Feet tucked safely in, the monsters under my bed can't get me, but if I move the alien - for surely that's...
This dream was better than waking. Like many others-- She was there. She looked different in every dream, talked different, had a different name; but she was the same person every time. She was an aspect of me, who I wish I could be, who I knew I never could be.
Except in the dream. While I was still the awkward, shy man I always was, in my dream I could share dinner with a woman who had all the qualities I wanted. She could talk without feeling nervous. She was ambitious, no regrets of /not/ doing something. And, of...
The coat was ragged. No, not ragged - raggedy. Tatterdemalion in some circles. Tatty, to his mother.
Love, to Matilda.
She slept in the pockets, wrapped herself in the arms and nibbled anxiously at the buttons.
Button.
He'd worn this coat for years. Navy blue pea coat from the army surplus store downtown, his first grown-up purchase. He lived alone then. He went to school, paid his book fees and came home to his one-room flat with a lukewarm kettle and a dusty sleeping bag on the floor.
He'd never had a pet. Allergies always did him in.
Then Matilda...
I held it at arm's length. Three feet long from blade to hilt it, the replica Confederate cavalry sword is beautiful. It is etched up and down the length of the blade with scrollwork and in two places with the letters CSA. My heart trembled as I held it loosely, admiring it. I couldn't believe she'd sent me this sword. It is a beautiful birthday present.
He was on edge today, I could tell. The whole drive over to the crime scene he was quiet. He is never quiet unless is trying to solve a case in five minutes, his ex-wife is being a pain in his ass or some thing more sinister was on his mind.
We crossed the holographic police line. It recognized our badge numbers and IDs instantly. These things save so much more time than that old, shitty tape we used years ago.
He knew who to talk to, and walked right up to the officer in charge.
"We got this boys,"...