A dapper man picked up a penny. He tossed it the air, but it fell. He never caught it. A spankled girl kicked up her skirts. They tangled about her legs, and she tumbled. A tired child opened is mouth. He cried out, but no sound came. No sound came. Sometimes nothing falls. Sometimes nothing lands. Sometimes nothing comes at all.
It is useless to try to explain that to the Thing. They don't understand cause and effect, you see. That is another dapper man, Commander Hollis, trying to explain. They don't understand us, and we don't understand them. The...
It was such a long time ago.
Such a very long time ago.
Yet for some reason she had still believed she would know the way.
As though she would remember the path that she had taken over and over when drunk, in the middle of the night, surrounded by people she hadn't known hours before but were now her best friends.
But it was daylight and it was years later and nothing looked the same.
Was that always a carpark?
Were the buildings those shops stood in new?
Was that where they had kissed?
Was this the corner where...
He set the plate before her. It was barely covered, a thin, fatty slice of what looked like baloney slapped alongside hard, molding bread. It had been arranged carelessly, lazily, and the boy snarled at her before he left, sliding the table back with his exit as he walked away, back into the kitchen. Sighing, Alina pulled the plate towards her chest, her elbows banging against the table as she slid the meat off the plate and diligently placed it on the bread, bracing herself for the stale taste as she chewed purposefully. The apartment was empty, the walls barren...
One of the things about Seaburn beach is the dogs. The dogs go wild on the beach, their little eyes pop out of their heads with excitement. Many of the people on the beach have packs on them, hairy little muts discovering their inner wolf. Sometimes a dog will jump up at you, almost knock you flying, and the owner says,
'Sorry, he never usually does that.' Well.he does, of course. I didn't see the dog concerned. I didn't even see the horse. You wouldn't think I'd miss it.I'm picking up sea glass, eyesdown turned, I hear yelling, I ignore...
It had to be the bumblebee parachute. I wanted one with Hello Kitty on it but Al said no. Black and yellow clashed with the sky. That was important.
Good choice, given the photograph above. Man, I thought Lady Liberty's presence was so commanding that she'd always be the focal point. Not true. It's me and Al in our parachutes.
Yep. We landed on Liberty Island and there's a whole throng of well-wishers around us. Someone asks if someone watched that old David Copperfield special where he made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Nuh uh. That was a long time...
The lights fled all over the world; it seemed as if the whole was stars. Everything blended into the night. All people could was stare admire beauty beyond imagination. The night didn't seem like the night; it looked something else. Something different. Blues were covering uo the black. Black was covering up the blue. But everyone didn't notice, because beauty is all they could see. A lady stood in the balcony, which would be one of her only moments alone looking at the beauty. All she could do was, and admire she did. Her eyes seemded glow in astonishment, but...
The ransom never came, poor fools.
The two kidnappers waited with young Jacob Cartee standing between them. The boy looked well, unhurt by the men who'd taken him. That was good. James despised child abusers. "In ten," James said softly, speaking into the mike on his collar.
He shifted his weight, noted the direction of the wind. Slowly, he inhaled as he gazed through the scope on his M99. Time counted down. At "one" he exhaled and pulled the trigger. One of the kidnappers - he'd taken to calling him Ogre - went down instantly. A second bullet escaped the...
The girl looked up at her mother and said, "We're small."
It was sudden--so sudden that the mother looked down at her child in surprise. But then she nodded solemnly. "Yes. Yes, we are."
"Why are we small?" the girl wondered, glancing at the many people in the room. Some, with a friend or a mate or someone, and some with an empty chair beside them. Her mother sat down in one of the tables, looking longingly at the other chair, which was empty.
"Because there's a lot of people. We're a small part of everyone. And you're the smallest."...
I remember being that young. They seem to be about the same age that I was when I was engaged to my now ex fiance. We were so hopeful at that age. Thinking that we would take each other by the hand and go through this life sifting through all of its difficulties, learning together how to be separately one. We would hold each other like this young couple is now, tightly, looking out over the night time city lights thinking that we'd find our place somewhere. How wonderful it was. But how much more painful the conclusion to our...
The men and women in reflections only meet us when we meet them. Our relationship is one only in passing and it seems like every time we are reintroduced to them, they bare a striking resemblance to ourselves. They wear the same clothes, styled their hair the same way, even brought along the same items like a bag or groceries. But I wonder if they ever feel the same way that we do. I wonder if we go to meet them they are happy and the same things that we're happy about, or struggling with the same difficulties that life...