"Oh, do come for dinner!" she purred. "Is there anything you don't eat?"
"Well ... quite a few things," he said. "I hate to be awkward, but I don't eat cars ... dustbin lids, flower pots, hurricane lamps ... old rope ... generally anything in the mineral category. Although I do drink mineral water, of course," he added.
"I was thinking, anything in the more animal or vegetable category?" she laughed.
"Oh, um ... rhinoceros, lion ... elephant ... panda, any protected species, I suppose, on ethical grounds, of course," he said.
"So anything within reason ..." she began.
"People,"...
Giving in wasn't an option. She - he'd not had time to ask her name - had wept, pleaded, then finally agreed. Shuddering, the way he'd imagined a suicide would cutting his own wrist, she'd - Hell, he should ask her name at least - placed the unpinned grenades one at a time behind his back.
The release levers successfully pinned between spine and the plastic that had separated driver from passengers, he felt their edges anew as he extended his arms to push against the bus's folding doors.
"Good girl. Get upstairs. When it's safe. When they're all gone....
She was walking down the sidewalk in the downtown area of Seattle when she noticed a pile of white blankets and other pieces of cloth laying haphazardly on the right side of the sidewalk.
When she approached the bundle of the white blanket and other cloth, she briefly felt for it, thinking that there could be someone sleeping or even a dead body that was either abandoned, or may have died from an illness related to the recently unbearable heat.
However, she found that no one laid in the blankets, made obvious by the way that it was just tossed...
Absent.
He sat right at the front, but would never once look up at the board all while knowing full well the snippy teacher would think him rude. He would only doodle inside his beat-up notebook he'd kept since seventh grade, and I would never know what exactly it was he was so intent on drawing.
It's a project, he would say.
He is not here today. He and I do not interact much, but I know he is beautiful. He is beautiful and I have loved him since I laid eyes on him. I have loved him and loved...
It felt like the last night on earth, the last day of the world.
The truth of it was simply that it was the last day for the two of them.
She wasn't certain she could really pinpoint the day they ended, nor that she could really work out why they ended. It was as if she'd woken up one morning, looked at him (his back, how long had that been the way they slept, not even touching, two bodies in the same bed, not two souls in the same space) and realised that she didn't love him.
It hadn't...
She'd always come running when I called. At first I only called her when I really needed her, but after a while whether I needed her or not didn't matter; I started to call her just because I could. I didn't realise I was doing it until she called me on it one morning. I'd woken up at 5am and the first thought in my mind had been her, the smell of her, the taste of her, the feel of her. It hadn't occurred to me that she might still be asleep and that she might not appreciate me calling...
They laughed at the little thing as it squirmed
The dark water so close but so far away now in their minds
The way things change the eye flits away reconstructs
Safety is everywhere in this dangerous time, safety is in the struggling eyes of a small thing
They left it to it's toil the diurnal nocturnal pull of it's nature
Clinging to the raft looking at the shore
The sun warm and pure on it's matted fur
My feet ached, but it was well worth it. There was blood on one of my insteps, the left one, and when I walked around the floor I tracked her blood around with me. The room, nothing more than an abattoir, had fit the bill perfectly. There was the pen I'd led her to. I said nothing more than, "You'll like it. It's the spookiest little spot." And she had crawled inside without the least hesitation. And as soon as she did so, the smile left my face, and the grimace reappeared, and I thought, "This is for all those...
The water was clear, so I stared at it, looking at my reflection. I was ugly, there were no two ways about.
She had been right.
I kept staring at myself. The disfiguring scar curved an unappealing path through my cheek. My hair was matted with dirt and dust. I wasn't even handsome in a macho kind of way, like someone who had just emerged from a bout with a bear.
She had been right.
My eyes were red and puffy with tears. My lips were chapped and sore. When I ran my tongue over them, they felt sharp and...
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take. Nobody knows until they've been in those shoes.
"If he hit me, I'd hit him back!" scoffed one colleague.
"It should never happen twice." said my mum.
I know they mean well. I hope they do, but it's not so easy, is it? I mean, I've read the stats. More women are killed after leaving their abusive partner. I suppose its something to do with regaining power or something. Isn't everything about power. Being the top dog. I didn't want to be another number. A statistic to...