I couldn't sleep with her next to me. Her gentle snoring, calming to almost anyone else, was absolutely maddening to me. It was nails being dragged down a chalkboard, squealing and begging for everyone for miles to be quiet long enough for the mouse dragging its nails to be heard.
I wasn't in love with her. I didn't even love her, not for even the briefest of moments. A marriage of convenience? Who was this marriage convenient for? I knew that she slept with other men behind my back and, conversely, I knew that I slept with other men behind...
My father was born. The pressed leaves of Limerick brushed from the crib. A mirage shimmers over the pond. Ships and flags and trucks. Red brick stoops on analog streets. Lamps on the corners.
We move and it is 30 years later. Soon the crushed leaves of New York gather. The east coast bleeds in tides, rushing us over the Plains.
In the West, we dry in the momentary sun, then open our mouths for the never-ending rain.
Until now, she'd never thought of herself as pretty.
But all this non-stop male attention must mean something. Guys all ages were asking her out, even last week John (aged 22) walked her home and came in for a coffee, holding her hand as they talked about music and poetry, hanging onto every word.
Bill was a seventy year old millionnaire and called about ten times a day desperate to meet up. Jack was even older and wanted to buy them both a mansion, he was so bored with his life that he spent all his time gambling.
Steve was...
I like collecting lots of hats
And placing them on heads of cats
They aren't too fond of wearing hats
They take them off, those little brats
The city was empty. That was the only remarkable thing about it. Its streets weren't paved with gold, it's shops sold the usual junk, it had poor districts and upper class suburbs.
The interesting thing was, the streets were empty, the shops had no employees and no customers and it's housing housed nothing. No one was there.
Well... there was one person there, there must have been, or how else could I be telling you this right now? Huh? Didn't think of that did you?
oh... right... CCTV... yeah, good point... sorry.
She nearly disappeared so quickly it was like she was never there, but for scent of her perfume. I knew it was her. All those years, and she still wore sweet almond oil. She was the only woman I knew who wore it.
I followed the scent, staying well back, not wanting her to see me; not yet. Oh, she thought she was safe. She thought I'd forgotten her, or moved on. She thought that now, in this new city of millions, I would not find her.
She was wrong. I have followed her. Every step she took, I was...
Sweating, her false horn started to slip, inch by inch down her forehead. "Damned glue! They said it would last 3 hours!" She lifted her nose and tried to balance the horn. "I hope no one notices."
She gathered her courage and stepped into the room, nose in the air, eyes darting from face to face. "Do they see? Will they notice?" Blinking greetings at those around her, she forced herself to smile. Better h
Cal reckoned he had it all just about figured.
Darlene, the victim, had spent some time with the cult back in '07. In November of that year, she split, taking with her something the cultists valued - valued a whole hell of a lot.
That didn't sit well with the Parler Jamais folks, so the sent a couple of guys over here to do her in. As for the recording, well, it was probably just to intimidate other cult members or something.
It ALMOST fit the evidence perfectly, but there were a few details that kept tugging at the seams....
She moved through my dreams in the silver slippers of moonlight. I shivered. It seemed as though something had touched me. I could hear the early morning mist slip off the slumbering streets...my bones shuddered and I longed in those lucid moments for warmth.
Did you breath? I felt a soft air cross my cheeks as I struggled against the frostiness cast by being in the limbo between sleeping and waking. Touch me! Touch me! make me come alive again, don't let me drift into cold darkness.
Sunlight drove hard through the window and fell on my cheek...is it your...
The time it will take is an enormous thought. Just to really accurately describe the amount of time it would take would in and of itself take a mind boggingly large amount of time. Big project. Big, big project. But if you start at one end and finish at what I assure you is the other end even though you can't see it now and likely won't for several months. If you bring enough soup and a change of underwear and mittens for the winter months then I can guarantee you and I mean rock solid guarantee you that at...