The wall is the place most people choose on their own. You come for a day or a week and it's never to see the sights. The sights are immaterial, and not unexpected. Temples, tea houses with dripping peremera trees hanging soot and sleek flowers over damp pollenated tables. Once thriving book shops and market warrens closed down by the proper authorities. Cab drivers who direct you round about ways and never give useful directions. None of these things are unusual, or particularly memorable. It is instead, the wall itself, that calls to you. The wall is the reason you...
My best friend is a guy called Peter and he's incredible at talking to people. He has a vault of information in his head that he's gotten from all of his past conversations with people. When he meets someone new he merely tells them what he knows so far about their hometown and then lets them build upon it, this he'll take to the next person he meets from there and so on. I was with him the other day and we were talking to a guy from south africa, we live in australia, and the guy was used to...
The alligator with the cardboard mouth. The whipped cream on the stairs. Hollow clang. Syncopated clatter.
The brighter colors remind me of childhood. Not that adulthood has been faded yellows or softening greys. But a luminescent green or radiant orange triggers my primary nostalgia.
The set is bare. The slice of bread reads 5 in ketchup. A lazy harmonica.
When time runs out here, it starts over there. Follow the alligator king.
The streets were empty. Suzy was surprised for this had never happened before. What had happened.
Not only the streets,not only the parks, but the houses, shops, and schools were empty. The city was empty. The world was empty.
Suzy was confused, this was a bustling city of many. Where could the many go?
She checked all the possible nooks and crannies but no one was to be found.
Then Suzy realized something. She could still hear sounds. But what was going on? Why coluldnt she see and only hear? Was this the course of the blast?
Also, why did...
Vanquished, that was how they wanted me to feel as I knelt there on the cold flagstone, my head bowed, my hands clasped.
I could hear the echoes of the crowd marching up the street and knew that they would be upon me soon, their torches ablaze, their spirits hungry for blood.
I was to be renounced as a witch, that most reviled of creatures.
My fate was no longer in my hands, I was to surrender that along with my freedom and my life when the mob broke into my sanctuary.
Because I had dared too love too much,...
The dapper man picked up a penny. He inspected it, rolling it over, back and forth in the palm of his hand. satisfied, he pocketed it and kept walking down the street, a whistle blowing through his thin lips.
He stopped at a newspaper stand and debated over the local or the national paper. He glanced from side to side down the street and asked the man working there if he had anything more adult.
The clerk gave him a knowing nod and reached under the counter. The dapper man pulled at the neck of his suddenly tight shirt. He...
"It was a cold and stormy night..." I read as I began to read another mystery novel. A lot of stories begin with this phrase/description of the scenery. Whenever I read it, I don't imagine something bad is going to happen because I have read it many times. But rather, if the opening scene was to describe a more creative and original scene I may be more interested. These are the thoughts that roam through my head as I try to do the reading assignment for my high school literary class. It's impossible to focus when you cannot read through...
"I am slowly forgetting her here" Dante whispered to himself "I did this for her and I let myself be punished in her place." Dante rubs his cracked and dry hands on the cold stone floors trying to get his mind of the past. "I can't let myself be distracted with things in the past" Dante hissed "I need to remember I'm doing this for her." He starts to hear the guard's footsteps coming towards his cell again. I must not be
A crappy painting of a girl in headphones standing on the crest of a mountain, surrounded by butterflies. This is what passes for art these days? Seriously, thought Darren, I've seen better finger paintings.
As he made his way from picture to picture, Darren realized that art wasn't really his thing. Eventually, he made his way back to the entrance of the labyrinthine museum and stepped back out into the practical, utilitarian world of the city in which he lived.
Still thinking about the butterfly painting, Darren wandered through the streets of the bustling, monochrome city, occasionally bumping elbows with...
She hid behind the thin sheet of fabric. Her hair gently fell upon her bare back as she felt the breeze gently brush against her bare chest. Her eyes shifted from left to right as she watched his every move. He walked to the edge of the bed and began to unbutton the wrinkled dress shirt he sport that night. The shirt reeked of hard liquor and a slight hint of nicotine. She breathed in the heavy scent of sin that floated through the room. Unable to control herself, she let out a soft moan. He turned towards her direction....