Gregor couldn't focus. The sample problems in his textbook grew more and more indiscernible as the noises from next door grew louder and louder.
His neighbor was the problem. When Gregor had first moved into the apartment he didn't have a neighbor. Until one day he was awoken by a construction crew. Gregor's distracted mind drifted back to that morning. He remembered asking the construction worker.
-Hey, what's the story, man?
-Some bass with a trust fund is moving in. He's paying to waterproof the apartment so he can move in.
-A Bass? As in the freshwater fish? That's crazy...
This dream was better than waking.
Awake the pain from the bruises was beyond belief. In this dream, I was pain free and dancing in his arms. He had come up behind me and I'd heard just his footsteps softly approach me, followed by a gentle cough. I'd glanced over my shoulder and looked straight into his deep brown eyes.He'd held out his hand and asked "May I?"I'd gratefully turned into his open arms and let him whirl me onto the floor. For twenty minutes I was in heaven as we waltzed around and around.
Then downstairs he dropped a...
If there was hope, it lay with the proles... or something like that. Winston, the character from that stupid book he'd been forced to read for English lit, had been whinging on about how the proles were stupid or something, but yet he seemed to find hope in their humanity. What? Why? His teacher would want him to expand on the concept, and he couldn't very well just copy the Cliff Notes word for word, nor admit that he'd simply read the synopsis. He called up Cara.
Her voice sounded sleepy on the phone. "Yeah? What do you want?"
"Why...
The year was 1986 and I was 10 years old living in south Louisiana. My family had been living in Louisiana for generations and we had a long proud history in the area. I grew up in a little berg call Bayou Pigeon. The distinct accent of south Louisiana had missed me due to watching too much television and alot of speech therapy when I was younger.
School was like any other area of the country. You go to school all day, work hard, have a nice recess, deal with your share of bullies, laugh with you friends. When you...
The detective sighed and adjusted the Stetson balanced on his head, fingers rubbing the brim lightly. "Where're the survivors?" he asked, looking over to his deputy. "They're over that way. Shaken up, but there were more survivors than deaths." he replied, gesturing down the tracks to a small mob of people milling alongside the derailed train. The detective nodded. The crash was most likely an accident, but the police had to investigate anyway.
He staggered down the embankment dotted with scraggly sage to the wreck. The red dust of the desert clay had been kicked up in the skidding crash,...
Potatoes. All she could think of were potatoes. Since going on this diet, she was even dreaming about potatoes. Chips, drenched in vinegar; jacket potatoes filled with cheese; mashed potatoes; roast potatoes; any kind of potato. She was obsessed.
Every diet book had drilled it into her that carbs are bad, so if she was to drop two dress sizes before her best friend's wedding then potatoes were strictly forbidden.
She was excited about being bridesmaid, she really was. It was such an honour, though not totally unexpected, she and Haley had been friends since preschool. It was only natural...
The note on her mirror, written in femme-fatale-red lipstick, a shade she had bought but never been courageous enough to wear out of the house, said to meet on the roof at midnight.
The windows were closed and the door was locked. The recent humidity expanded the cheap wood door, causing it to stick in the frame and she could never open it without Mrs. Montgomery sticking her head out of the next apartment and telling her to keep it down.
So whoever came in didn't come in that way.
Lucy walked through all the rooms again, checking the windows,...
"I don't care if I get wet!"
Eric snatched at her hand, but Angel quickly pulled away. She let her hand extend beyond the umbrella's translucent canopy, its special shielding against radiation and chemical contaminants having been turned off despite Eric's warnings.
"You can't do that!" he cried.
"Why not?" she said. "It's been years since the fallout. Why use this stupid shield anyway? What difference does it make if things APPEAR normal?"
Tears streaked her lover's face, but he said nothing.
Disgusted with the futility of it all, she hit another button on the handle and turned off his...
Ridiculous. I've tried to write to you probably 30 times since you moved away. I have unfinished letters, words stuck in my head, of a million different ways to say the same thing.
In April I wrote a letter to you in my head on the car ride home from the mountains. Then I went home and typed it up; deleted it, then pulled it out of the 'recycle bin' on my desktop.
Now it's January, the only thing I ever sent was an 'I Miss You' card with a dog on it that looked incredibly sad and I have...
I didn't see my first Lighthouse until I was 28 years old. When I did though it had the same sense of mystery and power that you always imagined Lighthouses to have from reading stories and poems in which The Lighthouse was the start attraction of the piece, seeming to not only guide ships in the night but hold the mysteries of the sea. I wasn't the only one to be so impressed with my first Lighthouse having to fight for a space against its tall walls to have my picture taken, alongside various other tourists, who'd made the trek...