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 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
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. It had been an hour since the torrential downpour started. It was only a matter of time before she realized that she would not make it to her own wedding and so she closed her eyes and concentrated very hard. Blood began to trickle from her delicate nose, sullying her piercing white make-up. As so, crows' feet around her eyes displayed her delicate skin underneath. The rain started to lighten gradually and the street seemed to get brighter second by second, inch by inch. The rain...
"His eyes closed with a sinnister grin?" Rabbit said. "What does that even mean? His eyes were grinning? Or the grinning caused his eyes to close? I don't get it. The imagery just doesn't pop and imagery needs to pop, or at least not be this strange Cheshire cat thing."
"A what kind of cat?" Weasel said.
"Cheshire. A Cheshire cat, like in Alice in Wonderland."
"Oh, I've never seen that."
Rabbit looked at him, mouth open. "Regardless of having seen it or not, or even better, having read the book, since you are trying to be a writer, you...
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 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....
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...
Only four days were left until the end of camp, and he'd resigned himself to his fate. He wasn't going to talk to the girl with the ponytail. He had run through the reasons why she would never see anything in common with him, and could almost recite it like a creed of self-defeat.
He saw her at the ridge, looking out over the farms in the valley below. Her headphones were plugged into her walkman, and she seemed completely at peace.
The tape player clunked to a stop. She sighed, took off the headphones and looked around. He realized...
The idea is to create a false memory. Get a pretty model, blur the edges, overexpose the film. You can also create that overexposure effect digitally. Have her smiling, playing. Give her something that evokes childhood. Red balloon. No, we don't want to be cliche. Green balloon. And make sure there's an overriding color scheme. Green. We don't see a background - nothing but light on the horizon. This is memory, and memory is supposed to consist of overreliance on symbols, strong images, single focal points. That was the summer when...
We hire the model. She's angry and unhappy the...
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...