It was the nipple that made Clara blush. The rest of the artwork was intricate and exquisite, the calligraphy simply sublime. But her eye kept creeping back to the nipple. The nipple belonged to a drawing of a girl, peeking around what appeared to be a silk curtain. On the opposite page was drawn a geisha in a beautiful red kimono. Unfortunately for the geisha, the girl opposite her stole all attention.
What was this strange little book? Ancient pornography? It didn't seem titillating enough for that. Despite the nudity, the images had an innocent undercurrent, taunting, but not provocative....
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....
Holly scrutinized the first sentence of her novel. It was odd how not reading it for months had given her a wildly new perspective. When she was writing it, she'd been too close to the material, she hadn't been objective, hadn't made herself consider the fact that she was wrong in anything that she did. There were mental grooves worn deep in her mind that only now were swept away like footprints in the snow.
It ... sucked.
The ecstasy of seeing her work in print was instantly deflated by how awful she judged it to be. A single sentence...
I lost my grip on the wheel. The cruise ship went off to the left, then to the right, then dtrihght into a pile of rocks by the shore. Taking on water, I evacualted my crew and passnegers. Once safely on land, I looked around and wondering where in the heck we were. All I saw was slime...pink slime...and a McDonalds on every street corner. What a great place this is! I mean, McDonalds everywhere? That's gotta be good, right? Then I nboticed the people walking around...um, they were all, well, not in great shape? I looked at myself...not Arnold...
I shot my butler. I never really wanted to though, He was a kind man. It was a week ago, and since then I've been away from home. I've honestly never been past the garden walls, but I guess I deserve this punishment.
It was a bright morning, and the sun was shining graciously. I was hunting the sparrows that land to eat the seeds that were just planted.
Something went wrong. Horribly wrong.
I ran as soon as he died. I had nowhere to go, no money, and was very confused.
Right now I'm on a boxcar train, and...
Heaven; such a harmonious place.
With luscious trees and elevated mountains.
A lighthouse standing tall in the distance;
An lingering canoe floating in the shimmering lake.
Billowy clouds soaring across the sky.
A car driving down the road.
God is in presence;
We are in heaven.
OK. OK then. That's it? Really? Just- no. No. Honestly. The goal is to steal dinner? Come on now. I, the man who eats cats, can do a lot better than that. So much better. It's not like- I don't know- I'm pressed for a job or anything. No, not at all. Of course not. Why would I be? I'm the Cat-Eater. Of course I haven't been stuck on alley cats for the past few months- all skin and bones- far from the days where I ate the cats of the Tsars. They had respected me. You know what? I'm...
The room was white, that much was certain. Its brightness was intoxicating. Two men stood over a small table, they were draped in white lab coats and held brown clipboards. Their arthritic hands jotted and scrawled down various notes and blurbs, and they occasionally looked up from their clipboard to observe what was on the table. The table was round, and it had three legs that were in contact with the white floor. At the center of the table was a small white mouse, belly up, red eyes staring into oblivion. The creature was dead. It had been dead for...
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...
Absent. Gone gone gone, baby gone. She's gone again. She's away. She's fled, she's left the scene. She's vanished. You want to call the cops, hire a bounty hunter, marshal the town, grab the pitchforks, light the torches, whatever it takes, to drag her back. You would do so much, you know you would.
It's the future you can't get a hold of. You know the past and you want to scratch the eyes out of the present, but you don't want to see what's ahead. Just bring her home. This is all. Anything now, you'll do anything. Come back....