The seven of them gathered around the long dinner table and silently shuffled the serving platters clockwise. Mechanical arms held, then spooned and dropped food, taping the edge lightly against the plate. Then back in the dish and passed the person to their left, and they received from the right.
Pitchers of iced water sat sweating in the middle, surrounded by short glasses, and borders by salt and pepper shakers and piles of napkins.
When all the plates were filled and the serving dishes stopped moving they leaned their heads down and a silent prayer ran from the moving lips....
In the beginning, he tasted like rainwater: salty. Dried sweat around the rim of his mouth, a taste that clung to his mustache bristles like saltwater taffy.
In the beginning, he was rainwater, and I was a pool. Splashes hit the bottom. He said, you are a the ruin of mankind, rising to the tops of the trees. He said, you make me greedy to reach your destination like a home.
In the end, he tasted like a mountain top. Stretching high above the clouds to breathe a privileged cold. And I was a seed that could not grown on...
Pulling stitches out. I can do this. it's going to fucking hurt, but I can do it. Maybe I should have eaten first, my stomach is in knots, my heart sunk. That would be the last of the food, and then I would have to brave those beasts. Those fucking beasts!
It had been about twelve months. At first, it seemed laughable. Any science experiment gone wrong in this way, shrinking of huge creatures, or extremely exaggerated growth of the tiniest usually started as a series of late night jokes.
Who would have thought that butterflies of all things would...
She normally didn't speak up. She was the quiet, reserved type. The type who'd sit at the bar with her friends, and just silently listen to the conversation around her.
It was Julie that got her frustrated, though. Not just frustrated, angry. Julie was talking about the camp she'd sent her son to, one of those camps that promotes a more 'traditional' lifestyle. They advertised it as being 'moral' and 'healthy'.
The young woman had no children of her own, she was far too young for that. She worried that she was wrong for telling somebody else to raise their...
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...
Who is that person in the corner of my room? is it a person? is it an animal of somekind? Perhaps I should have looked more closely. I mean, come on? How did that person, that thing, get into my room? If it is a person, I'll bet it's the kind of person who thinks its funny to disturn a teacher's class when they are tyriong to do an activity that will benefit eveyrone, because on the STAAR test, well...you know what that test is all about. if it is a person, and that person did make me upsetin that...
, he assured the frightened convenience store clerk. The first thing was potato chips. He needed potato chips RIGHT NOW, he told her, or he would literally explode, because there were bombs strapped to him.
Don't worry about the bombs, he said again, trying to calm her down. But get me those potato chips quickly. I want the deep-fried sour cream-and-onion flavored type, he said, speaking slowly and enunciating so that there would be no screw-ups.
He had the advantage. She would be forced to retreat behind the counter, retrieve the bag of succulent potato chips that he knew she...
She always eats oranges in the morning. Awake at 6.30 and out at once to the fruit stall below her window. The sound of the traders' early morning banter is hazy in the grey veil of October dawn and the lines of fruit like a crown of brightly coloured gems awaiting her selection. Two precious oranges in a brown paper bag and back to her third storey apartment. When she slices into the dimpled skin of the orange its juices swell onto the kitchen counter and onto her pale fingers. Her hands are laced with the citrus scent for all...
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...
"Big wheels keep on turnin'..." Paul's hands beat on the steering wheel in time with Lynyrd Skynrd as he drove down the highway toward town. "....A Southern Man don't need him around anyhow!" he sang loudly, dancing in the driver's seat. His dark eyes shone with glee as the music pumped him up. Soon, Paul reached his destination and turned into the parking lot, waiting for the song to end.
Finally, the music stopped and Paul pulled the key from the ignition. Gradually, his heart beat returned to normal and he straightened his red tie and white Polo shirt and...