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...
From the day the museum opened, the mammoth was the first thing every visitor saw. How could they miss it? It towered over the entrance when they came inside, rain or shine, its trunk high above their heads as though ready to trumpet. At least they assumed she would trumpet, but no one really knew or cared.
Designed to model a beast that lived ages ago, the poor thing stood and gathered dust on its bits that were too high for the cleaning staff to reach. So the witch, a neo-pagan from San Fran, took pity on the poor beast....
The singer still held onto his microphone as he slumped to the stage. He felt as through a very large hand was pulling him very quickly through an ocean of green water. The crowd retreated, their faces elongating. Their cheers elongated, too, as though one corner of the cheer had been nailed to a doorway and then stretched around the world.
The world is elastic, he thought, and couldn't imagine why he hadn't noticed this before. Everything has a soft suppleness to it if you look hard enough, or perhaps if you learn not to look so closely.
Even the...
Have I ever told you the story of how I got expelled from high school? It all started with this asshole kid, Greg Helsprat. He wasn't called "Greg Helsprat" back then. Instead, we called him "Fistbump". He hated it, but it fitted. He used his fists a lot, but most of all he kind of looked like a fist. Anyway, Fistbump seemed to enjoy treating other kids like crap, but he always had something special planned for me. Maybe he hated funny people, maybe he had a crush on me, maybe because I coined "Fistbump". I never found out why....
Cat's pupils narrowed to slits as she glared at the falling snowflakes apprehensively. Snow, her long-time adversary, had returned at last. She'd dared to hope that after their last encounter, the freezing menace had been dealt with for good, but she knew better than rest easy.
She cautiously sniffed the air, preparing herself for battle. Snow threatened all she held dear, all that was precious and good. If Cat was unable to defeat it, it would spread over all the earth.
Her claws slid out of their sheaths; they were sharp, but not as sharp as she would like; the...
They gathered in the woods. On Summerisle. The pagan community anticipating a good harvest. Burning the trapped victim in The Wicker Man twisted and crafted into shape by the hands of the children and teachers at school.
I watched from a distance, secretly recording. Traitor in the midst. They were my family, friends, neighbours. I was one of them yet I was not. I was a Christian. Would-be outcast in this community, not that anyone knew. This was going to be my parting gift to them.
Freedom from sin. End of a barbaric ritual. Once exposed to the rest of...
"That's it. You've gone and gotten us lost!"
"Now, I haven't done any such thing. I simply need to reorient myself." He adjusted his thick spectacles and scanned the wide expanse of the coast before him.
"We've been wandering around this city for three hours and haven't seen another living soul. Now, that'd be what I'd call lost, huh?" The second man slung one hand into his pockets and took a long drag on a cigarette with the other. He exhaled a stream of smoke, in his anger reminding the glasses man of a fire breathing dragon. He relaxed a...
She didn't look at him; she looked past him, half closing her eyes as if basking in the sunlight. She was really trying to cut him from her vision altogether, the better to scry into the future he was pulling them towards. This had been his idea, his romantic idea: "Let's hire one of those rowing boats and take it down the river."
The top of his head dipped in and out of her frame of vision as he pulled them through the water.
"Tell me if I'm going to hit anything," he panted. "I can't see where I'm going."...
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...
If money was the root of all evil, then wine must surely be a close second.
Jasper gazed through the rosy depths of the wine glass in his hand, observing the scene beyond with quiet detachment. Wine had always mellowed him, left him with a feeling a pleasurable distance from his surroundings, as though nothing that happened would effect him at all. He remembered his girlfriend's anger at his apparent coldness when she informed him of her condition, the way she had yelled and screamed and beat her fists against him as he silently took in her news, analysed the...