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...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room.
I can't tell if he means me harm or not - he's not doing anything. He's just standing there.
I'm not certain if he knows that I'm here. Maybe he isn't certain if he's here.
I can't quite bring myself to approach him; I know I should do, I'm a scientist at heart, I should be testing my experience, the environment. Verifying what I think I'm seeing, what I'm perceiving.
But I'm also a coward at heart; a self-preservationist, a vulnerable young woman. With a strange man in her bedroom.
I...
"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...
Wine. The only way I can escape. The bitter taste of beer and harsh sting of liquour, far too much for me to handle. So I drink wine.
The man has been watching me for a while now. The one with no face. There names for him on the internet, there are stories, and jokes.
But there are few believers.
So I keep to myself. When I'm not drinking wine, I search for answers, but that often makes things worse. The more I read, the more real it seems, although to everyone else he is just a story.
I thought...
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...
The first time I ever saw Eve, she was laying down on a blue picnic blanket that convered a smooth cement floor. She was holding a bundle of pink and purple balloons resting her head on a bright polka-dotted pillow and staring up at the clear blue sky. Her image printed itself onto my heart. I walked up to talk to her and looked down and her dark brown eyes looking up at me. I asked her what she was doing. She took such a long time to answer my question that I was afraid I'd offended her.
When she...
"Eff off rain! I want a tan, not for my green shirt to get wet!"
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. Two potted cucumbers stood to the left of the doorway, vines climbing twined round trellises up the stucco, the few cucumbers skinny in the middle from lack of rain, though it rained now in gusts and sputters, droplets momentarily darkening her gown.
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. There was scant shade from the clear noonday sun in the inset door. Two cats lay lazily in the sun. She idly stroked one, the calico, under the chin.
Once,...
654 SYH. She sighed. "What the hell is this?"
"The plate," he said, the self-satisfied smirk on his ignorant face.
"Goddamn it." she said. "Mark, you are the most worthless cop ever. Just WRITE THE NUMBERS DOWN. Don't actually TAKE THE PLATES OFF OF THE CAR. That defeats the WHOLE POINT OF LICENSE PLATES."
His smile slipped a little. "Oh," he said, apologetically.
"I really can't understand how you can be so incompetent," she said. "If you were close enough to the vehicle for long enough to REMOVE THE PLATES, why the hell didn't you make an arrest?"
"Well, I...
They gathered in the woods. There were seven of them, rangers all. Alifer the Bold arrived first, his great yew bow across his right shoulder. Next came Hurq, the half-orc and Teriel the elf. Three others followed, the human couple Gawin and Meledere, and the half-elf Siri. Lastly, Helena, wisest of them all, arrived with her daughter Adori.
"It is time," Helena said after a moment's silence. "The Goblin King has gathered his armies and readies them to conquer the lands of Gaules." She glanced around at her companions. "We must all prepare," she said. "We must go to our...