"You know," Clark said, in-between rising above the water to take breaths as he swam. "I really hate you."
John shrugged; or, at least, performed as much as a shrug as you can while swimming. "I don't see why."
"What do you mean, you don't see why?"
"We're doing what I said we'd do, right? Go for a swim together. You were all uppity about the whole thing, so I challenged you to do one length of the pool with me. Well, here we are, doing one length."
"Yes, but you didn't tell me that we were going to be...
- Ok, I'm going. Don't be late again!
Her voice pierced the steamy hot bathroom as I lay, half submerged, pondering the taps.
I don't reply.
Every morning it's the same. I sit here, enveloped in warm water and steam, my mind completely blank. But always, she invades my mind.
I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for her. I would lay here, topping up the bath with hot water as it grows tepid. Just blank.
Occassionally I think back to my childhood. As the hot water swirls in through the warm I am reminded of something my Mother always...
Donna started twisting and the world melted away. Her socks moved back and forth on the ceramic floor. her elbows were tucked in tight against her, her hands almost parallel to the floor. The other dancers around faded and disappeared. The walls crumbled and let in the cool night air and bright stars overhead.
Then that fell away as well, and there was just Donna and the music.
Tears welled in her eyes but did not fall. She shook her hips. The tears dried.
The song ended and the world exploded back into existence. Now she could see Harry with...
Half naked and desperate, the child climbed the thin bars of the door, her cage, staring at the world outside. Her right leg crooked over the horizontal bar as she tilted her body, dark eyes staring longingly at the world.
"Get down from there!" her father snapped angrily. "You're gonna hurt yourself."
"When can I go out, Daddy?" she asked, turning to look at him imploringly. "I want to go out! You never let me do anything."
"You don't want to go out there, babygirl," the man said gruffly. "It's a dangerous world. There are mean people out there that...
She wanted to kill her. She wanted to murder the girl who got me fired. Why? I couldn't explain.
"Come on, Brad," she sighed. "Can't you be serious once in your life?"
"Maybe," he said. "We may not know for sure until I'm dead, though."
"This is really important," she told him. "We have to defuse this nuclear bomb before the silo doors open and Dr. Malevolence's computer virus launches it and starts World War III."
"You know, I'm not totally convinced," Brad argued. "How many viruses work perfectly when they're released? Writing viruses is hard, you know. Even evolution needs to try billions of times to get it right."
"You really want to risk the fate of the...
It was a pleasure to burn, in the end. Sarah had known it was coming without being told. Knowing things without being told was all part of being a witch, she supposed.
She hadn't ever chosen, as such - but rather she preferred to let the currents and grooves of the world guide her path through it. And the world had chosen for her to be a witch.
To anybody else, this might have seemed like a state of affairs that could be analysed and considered - weighing up the pros (foresight; cackling) and the cons (burning) - but for...
General Hutchison stroked his jaw pensively. "So this - what do you call it?"
"SR-33, sir. The soldier robot, 33rd prototype."
"Took you 33 tries to get it right, huh?"
Mr. Raoul ignored the general's attempt at humor. "You'll find that it's just as capable of understanding and carrying out orders as one of your own men, sir, but its reflexes are faster, its senses are sharper, and it isn't afraid of death."
"Sounds like the perfect soldier, son," Hutchison remarked. "So this SR-33, have there been any of them programming glitches with it?"
"No sir, the operating system has...
You dance because you don't know any better.
You don't realise what is really going on, you may never truly realise what's going on.
So you dance, the three of you - in a moment they are your sisters, your mothers, your lovers. They are your world, your dance partners, although if anyone asked you their names you couldn't give an answer.
You dance.
You will never see them again, after this moment, after the moon sets and a new day begins. You won't remember anything else about the day but the dance. The dance will live on in your...
"Tell me what she looks like," said the young man.
The young man had managed to find a box to sit on. He was resting with legs crossed at the ankles. He peered straight ahead, smiling slightly, like he was the only one in on the joke. But of course he couldn't see anything because he was blind. You could have told that just by looking at him, the way he was faking concentration on the scene before him with that sadly unfocused gaze.
The older man, who was much shorter, stood only a few steps away, with his hands...