She closed her eyes and disappeared. The notes swallowed her, refusing to let her go. The beat aligned with her heart beat, giving her the illusion of impossible strength. The music grew louder until it was an explosion--as if thousands of butterflies instantly fluttered. She wished she too could fly away. Fly like the waves of the sound. Fly like the butterflies.
But instead, she was bound like the hair on her head. Bound by responsibily. Bound by expectation. Bound by fear of the unknown.
When the department store exploded, fine home furnishings, clocks, toys and various fruits and shoes came raining down like a merchandise monsoon. Most of them landed harmlessly in the parking lot.
The people, however, did not fare so well. Most of them were dead from the initial blast, but those who weren't landed with a meaty thud, skulls fracturing like the pineapples that were also cast through the air.
It was one of the worst department store explosions of the decade, though strangely, not the very worst--that one came about three months prior, when the detonation occurred near the hardware...
Deluxe. Five bedrooms, four baths. Swimming pool.
So are they all. Four solid blocks. Beach all the way to the highway. Green roofs and white polyurethane fences to separate properties.
The mall, when I was young, Had three shops and a bar. When we stopped going, they had a movie theater built.
And there were horses too. Wild horses. The shit you see in movies. Harming one carried a $50,000 fine.
They moved them out to an island off the cape, I've heard. The developers weren't happy when they started getting hit by Excursions.
The mall is gigantic. It has...
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...
As he exited the train, he realized he had forgotten his bag. The Bag. As he rushed back onto the train to grab it, the train began to pull out of the station, and the bag was gone. Someone had gotten off of the train with it. As this realization hit him, he snatched his phone out of his pocket. It was his only hope. As soon as the Woman In Charge answered, he told her his problem. He could hear her quick tapping from her computer keyboard, as she told him, " Get off at the nearest stop. Turn...
I thought the world had been tilted upside down. It would have been preferable to its actual state. Everything looks nicer upside-down. The castle glittered across the water, upside-down. What was above it was only a reflection, of course.
I looked at myself in the water. My reflection looked at me. No, I looked at my reflection. My reflection was the real me.
Nothing's as we thought it was, I thought, amazed at the simplicity of it all.
I could start again! All my mistakes could vanish in this upside down world... Nothing would be the same, but everything would....
The water was clear. "I cannot be stopped, I shall continue."
The stone was implacable. "I am stone, I have been here for millions of years, not some come by night dribble. And I shall not be moved.
But the water was clear, the water would be moved, eventually. Through ten seasons and ten seasons more, the water made it's argument, and every drip, every gush, every freeze, its argument was stronger, and one season, the water continued, and the stone was nothing more than ten thousand grains of sand, each with its own mind, no longer implacable. The stone...
Ridiculous. That's how I feel. Every time that I look at my phone.
I know the sodding thing hasn't gone off. Of course it hasn't gone off. I put it in my line of sight so that I will know when it lights up and it's on my desk, I will hear it vibrate when it goes off and yet, ridiculously, I still press the button to check, just on the off chance that I've missed the buzzing and the flashing.
And why? What am I waiting for?
Do I really still expect him to text me when he's been...
"Pull!" Erin directed us. We pulled.
"Argh, it's no use!" Ted lamented. "He's never getting unstuck."
Paul's head and chest might as well have been fastened to the tree by some kind of industrial-strength Krazy glue.
"Dammit," Erin said, winded. Even the three of us, with our combined strength, had no hope of dislodging our companion. "Whose idea was it to bring that stuff to our picnic, anyway?" she demanded, scowling at the wicker basket full of the white adhesive.
No one said anything. In truth, we'd all agreed, even Paul and Erin. We thought we needed it to keep...
The results were in. The young men standing before the judges fidgeted anxiously in their military-style uniforms. James Cox, the eldest and team captain of Squad A, licked his lips nervously as he glanced over at his group's only rivals, Squad Z. They'd eliminated the twenty-four others between them through a mixture of deceit, strategy, and main strength.
"Team Captains Cox and Denmark, step forward," Vice-General Mark Harrelson said curtly. Instantly the two young men, both sixteen, moved the single step forward. "Team Z is this year's winner," Harrelson said in a flat voice.
James had an instant of remorse...