Gigantic.
Enormous.
Immense.
Even bigger than Daddy.
Evie looked up at the ship as they waited for the cars to start boarding.
"What happens if it sinks, Daddy?"
"It won't sink, pet."
"But what if it does?"
"It won't." Evie sighed and looked back again. There were people moving around, she could see them. Little ants pulling ropes and other official-looking things.
"Why isn't Mummy coming?"
"She can't, pet. She would if she could."
Evie held tight onto Daddy's hand when the tannoy rang out.
"Please make your way back to your cars now. Boarding will begin shortly."
They went...
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...
It was like the time he thought that Daddy was hurting Mummy, he was sure. He was certain there'd be a Reasonable Explanation, like when Mummy shouted at God in the middle of the night, and asked Him for 'more'.
He was trying to work it out, to see what the Reasonable Explanation could be. Sometimes there isn't one. One morning when Granddad Alan was alive and he was staying at the house, he'd found his granddad eating Smokey's SuperRabbit food for breakfast with Mummy's red label milk.
He'd tried to see the Reasonable Explanation but there hadn't been one,...
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. It had begun to exude a rather offensive smell, but it was not that that had caused me to desire such distance between me and the thing that would undoubtedly change my life.
The thing in question squirmed and grinned as she shoved a fat hand in her gummy mouth.
"You're sure she's mine?" I asked for what was probably the fiftieth time.
"Absolutely sure. The DNA test was entirely conclusive."
The baby gurgled and reached her now slobbery hand towards me. I raised my eyebrows and slowly brought her towards my chest, where...
Candace wants all her glasses to look half-full, but Martin can't stop complaining. He's tried to keep his mouth shut when work is too busy and when he gets cut off on the road, he sometimes count from ten out loud.
But generally, Candace is too fat (thick!) and their house keeps feeling smaller (cozy!) with all of the things she hoards (collects!) that he's prone to throw some of the junk (trinkets!) at the wall in hopes that they shatter. When she sweeps up the mess, she hums the chimney sweep song from Mary Poppins.
Once a month, she...
It was the only thing left of the north building. Three thousand tons of steal, concrete, and human flesh had been on the corner of 21st and L in northern Chicago, now all that was recognizable was a portion of the elevator control switch from unit 2-b.
"Mr president," the secret service agent tapped President Chris Goodwin on the shoulder.
He turned and nodded to the young agent and took the envelope containing the keys that would end the world.
"This isn't the right response Chris," said his wife. "We have to consider other options."
"With all due respect to...
How tiny. That was all she could think as she held it in her hand, how tiny it was, how tiny every feature of it was, the eyes, the scaly pro to-feathers, the beak, even the little talons, how exquisitely tiny to hold such intricate detail. She could feel the small heart fluttering through the fragile body into the palm of her hand. How tiny.
It moved slightly, shifting it's head slightly to cast a dark eye up at her. It wouldn't last long. They never did, when she found them like this. She'd tried to save the first couple...
What had just happened? He tried to focus on where he was but his head was aching. Why wasn't she with him?
Vivid images started to flash into his head and his limbs tingled with the sensation of cold.
The boat. It was gone and it had angrily and unjustly taken her with it. There was nothing that he could have done - or was there?
As he had grasped her wrist with all the strength in his body, he had looked into her blue frightened eyes. Suddenly his hold on her had weakened and she fell down into the...
Travel light, but take everything with you. Everything that you might need. The bare essentials. Nothing that might be termed as excess. Nothing that might weigh you down, nothing that might, at the other end, end up in a cupboard or a loft, forever after forgotten and stored away.
That's the problem with belongings. You accumulate so many unnecessary things over the years, things that once meant something to you, perhaps even a lot, but that, over an indeterminate period of time, lost that once owned meaning and became, instead worthless, meaningless. The Valentine's Day card from an old lover,...