Pristine. Vacant. Blankly inspired I suppose.
I stood there stiff at the edge, the reservoir grasped my echoes of desperation, but regurgitated full truths. I was to die.
Only my faulty pretences did I end up here, it was only by my willingness to give up on all that was once so attainable. This rock here is the last tangible relic of my hope, but in my full awareness I know it is.
Where did this all start my thoughts of unforgiving failures? It started at that dream, that heart-wrenching dream. In my old home that creeked with emptiness and...
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...
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...
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...
They gathered in the woods at three o'clock sharp on that sunny summer day. The children, there were seven in all, were meeting to discuss a problem. A very serious problem. One boy, about ten years old with sharp features, tanned skin and dark hair, stood up.
"Now listen up. We gotta find a way to fix this. She just can't stay here and boss us around like that!"
"We'll rebel against the forces of evil," said another boy in the small crowd. They were, suprisingly enough, referring to Angie, the newest babysitter in town. All of the children thought...
My mother was not svelte. She spent her life washing clothes, lifting children, and hauling sacks of potato and flour from the market to our small apartment in Flushing. My father frequently looked at the Sears catalog, commenting on the models within. "Why don't you look more like this one?" he would ask, as though the answer weren't obvious. My father did not look like Marlon Brando (young), and my mother did not look like Marlene Dietrich. Yet somehow, I never heard my mother ask my father why he didn't look like this one. Long suffering, some might say.
She...
I lost my grip on the wheel.
It was a dark night, yet the sky was completely clear. It was a tired night, yet there had been man cups of coffee. It was a restless night, though everyone was laying down. It was a night full of oddities.
I sat forward in the seat, trying hard to hold onto the wheel as the car began to skid around on the road. The longer I tried, the harder it became. I slowly began to lose my grasp, and I realized how all the events that had happened that night led to...
He steps on to the yellow line, crossing the line is something he's practised at. It is an art-form, not something he does with paint or words, but step by step, despite the open arms of the person standing alongside him who is trying to make him stop and think. He sees the oranges, standing side by side next to the limes, he wants to pick up a lime and throw it, but a car crawls by and he doesn't, he picks up an orange instead and throws it as far as he can. The orange flies through along the...
Elspeth closed her eyes and desperately tried to focus on the frantic noises coming from her headphones. The general static briefly gave way to a hideously drawn out scream, followed by a voice she recognised as belonging to the captain of her unit.
"Fire at will! That is an order, sergeant! They're coming in!"
The note of panic was unmistakeable.
When Elspeth finally opened her eyes, she knew why. The sky was filled with terrible, shrieking pink wings, and every piece of air seemed to want to attack her. Summoning her last reserves of strength, she desperately raised her plasma...
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...