Chairman Mao came into town at the insistence of his family. He was not happy. His mother, whom he had loved far more for every difference from his father, did not look well. Chairman Mao, accustomed to finding his mother pleasant to look at, did not want to see her.
"YOU have abandoned your father!" cried his relatives.
"And my father abandoned me well before" said the man who remembered his father's cruelties all too well. Who were these people to remind him of the past. He loved his mother and he doted on her.
He despised his father. He...
He hated the color green, he hated it with all the enamel in his big front teeth. Since he was a tiny woodchuck he was teased mercilessly by his peers because well, he wasn't colorblind like all the rest. He could see the color green...everywhere, everywhere! The anger grew within him against this gift that he called a curse. He just wanted to be like all the other woodchucks living in their happy, ignorant, colorless little worlds. He could never sleep during the day with visions of sugar green fairies dancing in his head. He began taking walks, destroying all...
You could use a little direction, said Junie to Sam.
They were sitting cross-legged in the wood chips on the playground. Junie was wearing a polka-dotted skirt, and she spread it over her knees, aware that her Hanes-covered little bottom was unprotected from the dirt.
It was something she heard once, from mother.
Sam said nothing. He was dumping wood chips into his lap with his fists, wanting it all. Making a pond and filling it up.
Sure, said Sam, through his spitty little teeth. He pointed to the South.
Don't you see?
He jumped, I jumped. She sto
A steady rain poured outside to her left. On her right, the family had gathered for a special dinner. They sat quietly, watching the girl make the biggest decision of her life. Would she stay with them and eat, or run headlong into the wet streets of the city?
She had one reason to remain, and one reason to leave.
Both compelled her greatly.
Her father had been sick for a year. This dinner was to celebrate his good health. He always called her his little red devil, for she was mischievous and always wore something red, every day.
She...
Looking out my thirteenth floor office window, I marveled at how dark, gritty and simply dirty the air looked. It was so hazy, it looked like dusk even though I knew it was only two pm. I decided to give my brief a break and go eat some lunch, this was the first time in four hours I had looked up, and I noticed the stiffness in my back, the hunger gnawing at me.
"God, look how dark it is! It's like we live in Gotham City!" I said to the secretary. She didn't grin, like I had expected.
"What?"...
Nothing worse than weak coffee to start a Monday morning. I don't know how many times I've had to tell her, it's 2 scoops per cup of water and even then you aren't going to get a jolt when you drink it. I use three and a half scoops per cup of water and that right there is a coffee that will wake you up and send you out the door. No sense in drinking coffee flavored water, now is there.
So I poured out my cup and felt her eyes staring into the back of my head and I...
"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...
Lazy summer days are so much fun. The sun shining down, fresh apples on the trees, dropping down, and soft grass to lie on. Just pure bliss.
I reach into the picnic hamper next to me, and pull out a banana. Peeling it, I look around. No one else is here yet. That just makes things even better. I stuff the banana into my mouth.
It tastes just as good as the day feels.
I hear a shriek behind me. Turning around, I see a pretty young lady, her features pushed out of shape into a look of fear. She...
I don't want to hurt you.
I want to hurt. At least then I'll feel something. I can't go back to being numb like that again. I felt so, so dead.
Does that mean you feel alive now?
Like you wouldn't believe. Just being with you wakes me up.
Oh, really?
Please don't leave me. I can't go back.
I can't stay.
If you leave, I'll die again!
She was the most delicate girl in town, so different from all the rest.
I look at her and all I can do is smile, she's so beautiful.
I wish I could call her mine, but sadly she's already been claimed.
He's so lucky and he doesn't even realise it.
He treats her like garbage, and she knows it, yet she keeps going back.
I don't understand.
Why don't you leave if all you do is end up heart in the end?
Why not go to someone who you know will treat you right?
I wish you could see me....