Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. The doorway was not the kind of doorway best suited to huddling, and the gown appeared equally ill-designed for the purpose. Yet huddle she did. The rain dripped and sputtered from the sky, streaking her scarlet back as it fell.
After a time, she carefully unhuddled and picked up the bag that she had lain down beside her. She withdrew from it a small, glass orb, in which indistinct shapes and colours seemed to float. Lightning flashed briefly across the sky and as she held the...
There wasn't much more he could say. At this point they had been arguing for hours and it had slowly spiraled in to complete silence, neither one willing to say the first word, to break the ice (again) so to speak. Both facing away from the other, arms crossed. Defiance. Why is it that sometimes adults can act like children? Children are masters of the silent treatment. Then again, children are just that - children. It means so much more when it's your partner refusing to talk. And you not wanting to 'lose' by talking first. That's all it is...
Whoever said a picture was worth a thousand words had never met Frank.
The man had never met a camera he didn't like, a paintbrush he couldn't weild with the skill of an accomplished demolition man. He didn't just fail to capture his subjects, he mutilated them, butchered their faces on canvas or in gelatin print to the point that the destruction itself was an art form.
Shadows cast a sinister light on the angelic face of his little girl. Brush strokes created abhorrent textures in the golden halo of his wife's hair.
Artists were said to put themselves into...
The whale thought better and steered away from the shore.
I hurled a pearly conch into the surf and dropped backwards into the sand. Fiddler crabs filled the orchestra pit, their claws grinding salt and sand into no music. Two fronds breezed an applause, each clap sounding like "mock, mock, mock."
Alone, but not alone, the silence drowned by obstinate life.
Didn't even stop to look the dude in the eyes before shoving him off the bridge. The coat was fancy, that's all that mattered. Resale, maybe two hundred. But I saw it happen, and I followed this scumbag as he walked three miles to a Brooklyn pawn shop. He walks in, and four minutes later he walks out looking happy. Calls someone on his mobile. I follow. The guy he meets in a subway terminal gives him pills in exchange for the coat money. I follow him home. Get in the same elevator. Follow him down the hall. Before he...
Her youth was long past gone, as emily stared out of her nursing home. Her distant family no longer visited, her friends had slowly drifted from her memories and living years as her mind and body waned towards the final chapter of her life.
Living was no longer an adventure, but a dull existence of being. Happiness and love existed only in her fading memory. She stared across the grey sky and saw a lone drifting green balloon floating slowly towards the endless sky. She felt a connection to the escaping balloon, she sighed and wished her last wish as...
They were listening.
That simple realisation caught her offguard, her breath temporarily stuck in her throat and she felt, just for a moment, her strength falter.
But the feeling passed quickly because of course they were listening, they were her friends, they had held her up when she was too drunk to walk in a straight line, pushed her hair back from her forehead when she cried and hugged her with glee everytime that they saw her. They loved her, of course they were there, listening as she conquered her fear of singing in public.
It wasn't that they had...
"I gotta get out of here" he cried.
The room began to spin as he collapsed and sank against the wall. This was only the fourth time he had tried this method, and yet he was still shivering from the cold. Was only his fault he couldn't swim very well in the dark, he was just disoriented from being stuck in the room for so long.
"Now, now Mr. Stevens. No use getting all wet and miserable on my behalf." A voice softly chuckled above him.
Stevens could clearly see that the intercom in front of him was glowing red....
"I've got a loaded weapon and I'm not afraid to use it!" she shouted, holding the cat in her arms like an AK-47 as the snow swirled around her on the open playing field.
"You touch my snowman again and I will set the cat on you!"she snarled, walking menacingly towards the group of chav-scum teenagers who were busy kicking over her children's carefully constructed snowmen.
"Oh yeah, as if we're scared!" one of them challenged her. She just smiled, peeled back her black balaclava and revealed her badly scarred face. "He did this last month." she said simply, and...
The bird landed. Worm-in-mouth, ready to feed the little ones. The nest high up in the tree above Central Park. Those birds had the best view in all of New York.
The birds could see snow, sun, rain, and leaves, all land upon the Park's territory; people-watch, bird watch, even. They could sleep, sing, then fly away, and come right back to their home above the sidewalks and tourists.
Birds in NYC, see more than most others do in a lifetime. Watching people kiss, get engaged, fight, collapse, run, die, LIVE. They see night in NY, day in NY, winter,...