The children were not at school. They were not at home. Monica was frantic at the thought of Danny and Eric being missing. Where did they go? It was 7:30 pm on Wednesday, the day they usually got out early and went to Mrs. Frank's for what they called "playtime" before Monica got home from work. But Shelly Frank said they never arrived off the bus, and the Principal said they didn't arrive at school that morning, and Monica's husband, Max was notified. "That bastard," thought Monica. After 3 years of being absent, Max was still a contact for emergencies...
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....
"there was blood on my pillow and a noose in my heart"
These country singers were getting downright moros, good though. I flipped the dial on the radio looking for a talk station, always helped to find a little of the local flavor, keep me grounded or at the very least feeling like I was grounded. I was play acting at this and many other lives and I knew it but kept it up.
The telephone poles ticked away - wooshing peripiphialy.
The great desert southwest of my heart was blooming with the rare cactus flower of love.
In a...
The building appeared one day with only a white-haired gentleman who could have noticed. He didn't however, because he was too busy unwrapping a chocolate bar on the wooden bench he sat at every Wednesday. So only the wind grew unsettled with the sight of the 2-storied Japanese pagoda that shot into place in the middle of Central Park with only a sleek "pop" to give away it's sneak-up appearance.
Almost immediately, a black cat jumped from an overhanding willow tree into the window framed with yellow lacquer slats of wood. The man continued to peel away at the silver...
Savouring words was a joy to him. Illiterate for many years; he learnt to read and write late in life. His appreciation grew from prose to poetry to haiku. Others laughed that he swallowed a dictionary. He did not understand the derision. Loving words, enabling communication beyond speech seemed to him a peerless gift.
Then he discovered etymology. Suddenly connections between ancient languages and modern English brought a deepening joy and fruitful satisfaction beyond any other pursuit he followed. When some spoke he understood unusual words and could name the orinating language;
My mother never told me you could. But I did. And it was amazing.
I.
Met.
Her.
Now, I know what you are thinking. Some hipster wannabe hooking up with a bespectacled BDSM loving freaky chick over rare Miles vinyl in a second hand record shop in the village. A match dot com advert. But no. Far less interesting than that.
Haribo and limes.
Yes, at salsa class there was a girl I had my eye on. I had already clumsily tried to impress her by doing card magic at her through a window one night as she sat with...
It was not a world in which it was advisable to take risks.
It could be argued - had been, by a few scholars, in the deep and distant past, a more romantic age - that risks were always inadvisable, that this was what made them risks in the first place.
But those scholars didn't live here, they didn't live now, they were from a world of chivalry and knights and heroism.
They were not in a world where you were burned if you were caught.
There were marks all over her arms - his, too, they sat beside one...
They pulled up to the old bar, the Far Bar. They had been there numerous times before, but this was to be their last before projecting out of their own bodies and into some others.
"Come on, dad, of course she remembers you. Will you please just mellow out and come inside with me?"
"No way, buddy boy. You go right on in. Fuck her for all I care. Just let me lie in this car. This is where I'll die. Right here...in the volvo."
The son jumped out of the car and fisted his hand in a knot, shaking...
We're not familiar with the same weather or same temperatures. I don't know the blazing heat of the desert. You've never felt the deep wet cold of the Atlantic states. And then there's the sun and the moon, and the underside of the asteroid grazing our comfort zone.
We could sing country songs in the backyard tonight. It'll be cold, but dry, and Venus is near the moon.
We'll begin at dusk. My dusk, your dusk, and the dusk of deserts, dusk of satellites. Hot dusk, chilling dusk.
Dusk, dusk.
I jumped. And immediately regretted it.
The fear stripped me of all the other emotion that had been clouding my judgement. My wife, my children. Their faces all flew through my mind like the frames of a length of film.
"What have I done" I wondered as the air flicked my hair about. Pulling at my clothes as if it wanted to help me and stop my rapidly accelerating decent.
Then there was just disappointment. No sadness, no fear, no anger. Just disappointment. I had always sat on my high horse whenever I heard a story of one committing a...