The city was empty. The skyscrapers during the day looked powerful and full of promise. At night, they just looked like pieces of art. The hustle and bustle of New York was beginning to bug me, for the first time ever. I was going to walk far, but I'd see someone. So I stayed in my quiet neighborhood, passing by restaurants and apartment buildings. "Being alone was possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to me." I thought to myself. From then on, that's all I could think about. That sentence rang in my head like a dinner bell....
I like my room. It seems the four walls move closer to me everyday. I feel like I’m sitting in a mental asylum. People come in and out, give me food and leave. Just like the Neverending Story, The Nothing will soon crawl over every inch of my world, plunging me into eternal darkness. I walk through the sea of faces. Expressions nearly as blank as mine. Someone taps my shoulder. I whip around, avoiding eye contact. I see a man. I slowly lift my head to inevitably meet his eyes. My eyes slowly moved passed his perfectly plump...
The wind is picking up outside. It's unsesnoabley warm. The announcer on the television rattles off a list of counties that are under the warning. Leaves scuttle along the patio outside the window. There is no fear, just curiosity, a little confusion. People step outside to gander at the sky. The voice on the tube implores us to take cover, yet we continue to look out the windows. Thunder rumbles in the distance. People sit on the swing set, passing cigarettes and smiling. It is always calmest, right at this
For a short time before television, people walked past store fronts to satisfy their lust for fantasy and projection. No actors, just mannequins, so a little more imagination was required. There was also some exercise, and words that more closely resembled conversations in between the fantasies.
Accordingly, Robert and Ruth were able to have a different life than their analogs 50 years later, Sam and Shirley. Ruth knew she could not afford the dress. Shirley assumed they could earn the money later. Robert and Ruth raised their children together. Sam and Shirley were separated before the second child was a...
"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...
Think warm thoughts.
Everyone hears about the other problem. Spontaneous Human Combustion, like it's some mysterious force. Ninety percent of the time, it's just a smoker who nodded off in a polyester easy chair. As if it's some big mystery. The other ten percent, you have your idiots that accidentally got soaked in lighter fluid, people trying to fry things, and other morons. Investigators act like it's so mysterious, but that is just because they don't understand fire. How it works, how it feeds. It's a bunch of pseudo-science, like a medieval doctor trying to cure people through bloodletting and...
She sat in her car, staring up at the Motel 6. After begging her boss to let her off early, she almost wished he would have said no. If her boss knew what she was up to, he probably would have.
"I shouldn't be here," she whispered to herself, staring at the motel key Steve gave to her.
But she also knew she wanted to be. The same battle she has every Sunday night at about nine thirty. It's always the same. Leave work two hours early, come spend time with Steve. It's become as easy as blinking; automatic, and...
Nothing is more terrifyingly beautiful than the intensity of a woman's Stare.
Not a gaze or a glace, but a Stare. One that lasts longer than a couple
seconds but no longer than a minute. The kind that cuts its way through
you, making you feel more- and at the same time, less- secure in your
strength as a man.
The shapes were obstructing my view. I couldn't even look out the front window of the car for the shapes. i was taught what a circle, square and rectangle were when I was a small child, but now I've forgotten. I've forgotten it all. Nothing remains from preschool, not even the color blurred crayon drawings from Mrs. Couch's class. The only sign I know is peace. If only peace could get me from point a to point b. If only I could find my way through the traffic that way. Little speck of dust look circular, but they aren't they...
The argument over the preferred pronunciation of "Pax Romana" bloomed into a bloody fistfight, not that it was terrifically violent so much as the pugilists were notorious bleeders. The patch of snow on which they sparred began to resemble the flag of Japan as arms unfurled, elbows snapped back, and fists clenched so tight, thumbs overlapped knuckles.
Inside, my kung pow shrimp cooled under the air vent.