There is a place, near where I used to live, that looked like this - you see it, right there? It's a bowling green. Not the bowling you and I would do, the bowling that belongs to another age. Mostly the elderly.
There were, in fact, two near me - high amusement, I can tell you, since we came to the conclusion that one had decided it was a rival for the other. And that said other had no idea that it existed. That this perceived rivalry would fuel them entirely, even though the other lived in blissful ignorance of...
When I swam across the ocean to my new home, I never guessed that I would meet the man of my dreams, or all the hassle we would encounter. As a mermaid, I was promised at birth to the son of another wealthy family that lived like mine. Humans were off limit, although it did happen every now and again, and caused terrrible rifts within the community.
Jack was so handsome, striking green eyes just like mine and long wavy hair. First saw him fishing at the pier when my hair got tangled in his line. What a surprise he...
He searched through the records, long dusky fingers flipping rapidly through file after file in the Archives. He kept going, past James, past Jenkins, past....there it was!
Private Justice Jernigan, 61st Georgia Infantry, Co. A. His hands fairly trembled as he pulled out the pension record, gazed at it, read it voraciously. There it was. Private Justice Jernigan, listed as "man servant" for William Jernigan. It was also noted that he was a confirmed soldier, having fought at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville before being crippled by a wound in his right knee. That confirmed the stories handed down by his parents...
Safura M Bhapavit had believed that the secret of eternal life had lain in discovering a relationship between religion and science. He had scoured his native India, from tropical south to mountainous north, in search of evidence that would lead him to the human being who most closely represented God, or Buddha, or however one choose to express it. The longing for this eternal life, Safura argued, must have its roots in the tangible and the real, despite centuries of confusion and myth.
He found Jane as he getting out of a taxi at Heathrow Airport, ready for the next...
She hoped she was dreaming, but it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt unnervingly real as she and her belongings fell, the ground coming closer and closer, faster and faster. She remembered going to bed, and she HAD been asleep, but now…
It had to be a dream. Had to be. Where had she fallen from, if not? And where had all these… these… things come from? Three alarm clocks? A pineapple? She briefly wondered whether there were any Freudian links here, decided there probably were, considering the banana and teddy bears. Perfect essay fodder for her psychology degree....
"Damn it!" She swore under her breath. The room was pitch black and she turned quickly. They were already gone. She twirled a piece of her hair, a nervous tic she picked up as a child.
"It's not funny, guys!" She yelled into the empty hallway. At least, she hoped she was facing in the direction of the hallway. And hopefully it was empty.
"Where are you?" She should have taken a flashlight. She could kick herself for being so stupid. They had been right behind her two minutes ago. She groped down the hallway, trying to find another door....
I came upon the stone after walking my whole life. When I reached it, I was surprised at how big it was. I looked up at this giant head of stone and it looked down at me and spoke.
"Why did you come here." the stone asked.
"To change you."
The stone laughed at me. "I have been here since you've known how to know. The earth has fallen away and yet I rise up. I am fundamental. How is it that you intend to change me."
I held up my hand. In my hand was a piece of sandpaper....
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...
The library was dark, lights shutting off behind me but I continued to thumb through the book. They had lamps on the desks, the kind with telescopic arms so that you could adjust the height. I'd pushed the bulb close to the pages so it left half of the images in shadow, a charcoal mystery for the eyes. I slid the page beneath the warm glass to uncover the next page. Illuminated- a dog sitting on the wooden cap of a fence, his face towards the sea. The rest of the picture was hidden in black shadow, the dog was...
I was on my way to Times Square to buy myself some coffee at Starbucks. I rested down for a little bit at one of the tables and noticed a man outside the window asking some people for loose change. I stared at my coffee and back at the man and I went outside and walked towards the man. He had scrawny, dirty hands and he looked like he hadn't bathe in weeks. I then asked him kindly if he has hungry. He had the brightest look in his eye and that toothy grin. He gladly accepted and we both...