Lola. That was the name of my new girlfriend. The one my friends all warned me not to get involved with. But of course, it was my life and she had been through so much already.
Bi-polar mother, alcoholic father, maladjusted siblings. Not really surprising Lola cut herself, gambled her benefits on the arcade machines and didn't eat much apart from dried Chinese noodles you boil in a cup.
Now that she knew that someone loved her, all this would change. She could pursue her artistic abilities, finish those novels, sleep at nights instead of watching movies and worry about...
He left the meeting sagging, a half inflated pool toy sinking in the acrid water. The sun was making him sweat, though he hadn't though that was possible. He's sweat so much during the interview he felt as desiccated as one of those silica packets they put in electronics to keep them dry.
Vanquished. Again. Another job lost because of flop sweat and his perplexing genetic gift of turning bright red under any form of pressure. How had his ancestors managed to carry their seed so far up the line? A bunch of panicky, stammering fools who traded flight or...
Shape. Whatever that means. Forms. You can study the symmetry of symbols we use in written language, words. Formless, shadows, we count them, bend our fingers around, call them dragons, call them dreams. Non-euclidean. Shapes that can't exist. Memories, shapes our minds have been forced to hold. Thoughts, shapes our minds create to deal with hope and fear, which... which perhaps I have a difficult time distinguishing between. Angular, curvature, some caricature of what I thought I'd be at 24. 24. Two shapes, angular and curvaceous.
It flies through the air, flashing silver and disappearing. My fate depends on that coin landing face up. All I can hear is my own heart beating in my ears, blood rushing through me as the coin falls ever closer to the table. It clatters onto the scarred wood, spinning like a small planet. He holds his breath across from me, eyes fixed upon the little silver coin that will decide our fates. It's inscribed with the words "In God We Trust" on the side my life depends on. "OK then, God. Do your stuff." I thought silently. The coin...
Hooked up to machines and pipes, I lay here, hearing my hard breathing, my hard heart beating.
I hear the beeping of a machine. I hear the sheets of my bed move together and I shift my weight from my left to my right. I hear my joints grind.
It is so loud in this room. So many things making so many noises. I can't stand it. Someone just come in here and make some actual noise. Something that an old man can be distracted with and not focus on the frivolous.
The frivolous things such as the time I...
"The day after tomorrow, this will all be over." Such a fucking cliche.
Sure, our road trip would be ending soon enough, and we would be returning to our miserable, monotonous, minimum-wage jobs that regularly take us to the very brink of sanity... but to pretend that everything we just experienced would be concluded as soon as we return to home port strikes me as truly false.
The thing that he seems to miss is the continuity of events which develops out of the dynamic relationship between what we do and otherwise experience, and the way we see our fundamental...
My mind was moving faster than my body. I wanted to play in the swing so bad but my feet weren't moving fast enough. I put my bum down on the small strip of plastic. Ran back and I started to swing. 1 swing, I was excited. 2 swings, I was getting higher. 3 swings, I was starting to get a little to high. 4 swings, I was on the ground. For a second everything was fine until I felt a sering pain in my back. I couldn't move. Pain was all through my body. I wonder what mum would...
I shot my butler. Bastard had it coming to him. He insulted me at every turn, never cleaned any dishes, put his feet up as I hoovered the floors. He never did anything for me.
I could have just fired him - that seems like it would have been the rational thing to do. But then he had the guts to insult my mother in front of me.
Nobody insults my mother.
It was a nice sunny day. I was having a picnic with my lovely mistress, out in the woods. We found a nice little clearing where we could...
"Someone left the goddammed gate open again, and the dog took off," my father yelled from the backyard.
Me and Bill were in the back shed smoking a crooked hash joint. When he started yelling, Bill panicked and dropped it, and then crushed it under his foot. But he didn't realize he wasn't wearing any shoes. He screamed as the cherry burnt into his sole.
I swallowed hard and waited for the inevitable.
Four deep breaths later, the door swung open on rusty hinges and my dad stood there, Taking up the whole of the doorway, blocking out the sun....
I hated the fairy picture. Instead of feeling at peace, secure, happy I always had sleepless nights. Mom sleeping on the floor near my bed, comforting me when I cried out. No matter where she put the picture, in another room, even in the trash, it somehow once again appeared somewhere in my bedroom. Once it was inside my Nancy Drew book, another time under the mattress. The worst time was when it floated from the ceiling right onto my face! I screamed the house down even though I didn't at first know what it was.
The parish priest blessed...