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.
The hunter followed, exposing himself. Edwin noted his height and confident stride. Their battle would be violent and difficult; but only if the hunter could catch him first.
As soon as he cleared the crowd at the train station he broke into a run, dashing past street vendors and through alleyways, zig-zagging across the city in an attempt to lose his pursuer.
After ten minutes, he paused at the mouth of an alley, leaning over to catch his breath. At the other end, a car went by ... then another ... then the hunter's silhouette appeared again. Slowly and deliberately,...
he ran into the room, his heart pounding and his clothes soaking wet. yet it wasn't dripping water it was dripping blood. Revenge was all the man had told him before he pounded at him. Revenge for what? what have i ever done? he looked for his phone and once he saw it he heard a pounding on the door. the house shook whenever the man pounded the door."you killed her! you killed her!" i heard him screaming and that's when i heard the door burst open and i could hear his heavy feet climbing the stairs. i dialed for...
My feet ached, but it was well worth it. I absolutely HAD to make the weight requirment for my dance competition. I only had three more days to lose another five pounds. My legs burned, but I suppose that I should have expected that much after a three hour run, but I thought that I could do it effortlessly by now. After being in dance for five years, I've had to really push myself to stay within my weight limit. Sometimes it was really hard to keep from eating. I knew that if I couldn't make weight, the uniform wouldn't...
She hadn't felt like this since she was six years old. Once, at a circus, she had begged her father for a balloon, swearing that she would take the best care of it . She realized now that his protests weren't cruel-hearted, but frugal. That he didn't have the money. That when he begrudgingly gave in, it meant that the family would have to go without that week, so that she could feel the joy of holding that light, floating orb above her head by a string, feeling the gentle tug upwards that whispered of something more magical, more ethereal...
The coffee was cold now, but she sipped it anyway, imagining the heat. She blew away non-existent steam and let the rain soak her skin. She had been sitting in the same seat for over an hour, waiting, waiting, waiting. There was still a part of her that hoped he was going to turn up. But most of her knew that he would not. The coffee she had bought for him was opposite her, and she watched the thin raindrops falling into it, making holes in the disappearing foam.
He had never told her that he would be here. They...
My kids are always begging me to go to Disneyland. I suppose I'm not alone in this. The thing that kills me is how well they argue their position. It's like I'm raising a pack of lawyers in my home. That's maybe the worst part of the whole thing - imagining that I'm incubating the next generation of shysters simply by encouraging my kids to back up the claims they make.
That's why I continue to refuse to take them to Disneyland even though they've mustered some really good arguments in their favor. I don't want them to think that...
Even before the industrial collapse, animals regularly came across absurd remnants of the human race.
Always practical, birds, squirrels, insects, and less visible creatures maintained just enough curiosity to see if an object in their environment had any survival value. There were no monkeys or animals with playful dispositions around.
Plastic was generally left to photodegrade and slowly contaminate. Cloth was picked apart by birds and reformed into nesting. A small percentage of the eggs turned into malformed hatchlings, owing to the vinyl in the plastic.
Always practical, mother birds pushed the failures out to make space for the well-formed...
her bedroom wall was a collage of every valentine's day card, folded secret note, doodles, drawings, things her friends had written before their father's got a job in another city and moved. Streamers, deflated balloons, pressed leaves, plastic flowers, candy wrappers, subway, bus and concert ticket stubs. Polaroid pictures and regular rectangle pictures and pretty much anything else a teenage girl might come across in her lifetime of movement.
The detective went over every piece thumb-tacked, taped or stuck to the wall, writing in his little notebook.
"Usually they just run away for a few days," he said. "Then they...
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...