The button glared at her from the opposite side of the elevator. Her eyes were strained from staring at it. The harsh elevator light that made the button cool cold and hatefully professional. It made the emotions associated with the button written in neat braille and caps lock seem to be resolutely finite.
She had been standing in the elevator for too long now. It was now or never. She shook herself. Ignored the panic bubbling in her thoat, choking her, and clawing in her belly, and stood straight.
Her sweating hand pointed her slim finger straight, and she jerked...
I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "There'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead. I am out of food, out of electricity power for the radio, and abandonded in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. I do not know how or what happened that led up to the plane crash all I know is that I managed to survive two weeks on the scraps I found in the plane and a nearby pond. This is my last statement to the world if anyone finds this, I am going to travel north...
Turning twice to see the darkness and the light, Keeley lost track of the zombie that had been running along behind her at surprising speed. Somehow he slipped in to the shadows as her light-blinded eyes took too long to adjust. No matter. Keep moving. She had to keep moving. She'd learned that early on. They were too slow to give chase. Except this one. Something about they way he moved led her to think that he was different. Faster, yes. But also more precise.
The bridge ahead of her looked empty. Still, she approached it warily, knowing that appearances...
You're forgetting what happened and remembering what didn't
I'm now your memory and have given up mine
When you're gone
Will that be a blessing or a curse?
I lash out in frustration
But the strike is soon forgotten
And I'm the one left wounded
Twice over
You forget what happened
And I remember for you
And in doing so
I have given up the last pure memory of childhood
I'd trade, you know
You take mine, I'll take yours
But I think you'd find my memory
A bitter thing
You forgot
I remembered
What happened?
I saw the thing. It was preserved in the glass case, the only one of its kind. So faithfully had the curators touched it, applied the special fluids, made sure that never again, never again would it be forgotten. It had been once before, after all. After all, memory is a sieve. And this was memory itself. It shouldn't have been forgotten.
I can't remember the thing itself especially now. I suppose that's expected. My memory's not special in anyway, no, not at all. It doesn't matter, anyways, just that it was a record, so that people wouldn't forget, wouldn't...
There was blood on my pillow. A lot of blood. A ton of blood. Where did it come from? It seemed to be dripping from somewhere. I looked up. The celing was dry. I looked around, I felt my own face, hair, ears, nose...all dry. What the h*ll was going on? Then, I heard something. A step. Two steps. Steps moving across the wood floor near the staircase downstairs. Was this the source of the blood? Was it the cause of the blood? Am I next? I was not injured, but I was still terrifyed. Suddenly, something came bounding around...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
The warm dirty mist saturates every poor. Across the street relentless construction of new industry raged on erasing the remnants of an older time.
The girl tries to imagine the world as it was, as she has learned in her history books. But now only progress and drives her world. She can not hear or picture the silence or the wildernesses she imagines and longs for. She grows weary of the diminishing magic of the unknown.
When I see these flowers, and this man standing here (that's me, by the way), and I see all the men with guns walking behind me, I'm supposed to say that the flowers remind me of a lady. I'm supposed to taste the dust in my mouth, remember my comrades who gave their lives, understand the difference between pride and loyalty, duty and identity.
Mostly, I remember not knowing where I stood with any of these things; thinking that this was the process to figuring it out.
We're all figuring it out, aren't we? To know where you stand is...
The earthy smell of autumn leaves surrounded me and stimulated my senses. The crisp crunch of leaves was projected through the isolated valley as I gaped ahead at the distant disturbance. Harsh rustling and twigs snapping told me that this wasn't wind. This was a predator. My heart raced, its beats rapid and echoing through me. I tried to run but my legs were plastered to the ground, heavy as cement. And then I saw it.
In the beginning, there were no gods.
A human boy named Micah, not yet a man, was the first to make the discovery that if the Earth existed, then there must be a heaven; a divine source, a metaphysical origin of the crude, material plane that we inhabit. And so, partly by accident, and partly by perseverance, he discovered the doorway to heaven.
He went through it without a second thought. His other human peers had always mocked him for being too short, too weak, too strange. His family ignored him. He had the time to uncover the doorway because...