"Mallard duck," she said, just before she placed the binoculars back down on the car hood. "No doubt about it."
This was the third time she had drug my out to this place to observe ducks. Or, in her words, to "administer some duck justice."
"Do we really need to be here this early in the morning," I asked. "I didn't sleep very well."
"This is when they're most active," she told me. "This is when they feed most, and that's when they pick on him."
"Him" was a duck with, so she said, a clipped wing of some sort....
The Ministry of Health had issued a flash across every network in the country. You knew it by the sudden crimson blur in your peripheral vision when nearly every screen within three hundred miles was showing the same thing. Such things could cause the closest thing to a standstill in a city of twelve million people.
"Mario, could you turn up the volume?"
"Sure, Jose," he replied.
"... at least fifty thousand have already been affected, with thousands more potentially affected. We strongly recommend wearing a breathing mask or handkerchief as an alternative, to prevent the spread of this endemic."...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. He tells me things. He tells me to do things. Sometimes, he tells me other people are lying. He tells me not to tell anyone he's there. And I listen, because he's scary. But I think they're starting to figure out.
They see my eyes dart his way when he speaks. They see my confusion when I try to separate the voices. They see my hesitation when he tells me they're wrong. I think they're starting to figure it out, and I can't let that happen. He told me I can't....
The thing about mermaids is, well, that they aren't.
You're thinking seashell bikinis and fish tails, but that isn't it. Not at all.
My cousin Marjorie, this is back in '30, mind you, and the turn for the worse had been taken by all of us. She kept her things, her jewels and her dresses. They became her scales, her fins.
She decided to become a mermaid in the same way that some of us choose to marry. It was deliberate, it took forethought. She knew that she would dive beneath the waves to never return. Perhaps she would give...
The pistol was cocked, ready to go. The young man stared down at the gun which was now locked and loaded, closing his eyes and taking several long breaths before looking over to where his older and more seasoned counterpart had been standing.
"We're going to die, aren't we," the young man commented, the hand holding the pistol starting to shake as his older counterpart exhaled heavily.
"We're all going to die someday," he mused in return. "So what if today is our day."
The young man sighed and looked back down at the gun in his hands. "I don't...
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...
Again, stepping on his rake. Not in the groin I thougt in an that terrible instant; too late. From behind the hydrangia bush he appeared like a plaid and argyle ninja. "Where ya headed Murphy?" "You know goddamned well were I'm headed you old sot!" I waved the pictures at him, in front of heavy ugly fat face. "I'm sending a copy of this to everyone you know."
He promised me it would work. He'd be able to get me out of the tank before I ran out of breath.
Each move, each second, carefully planned for months in advance. I'd practice both still and swimming like mad, holding my breath for longer and longer periods of time. I was up to three lengths of the pool.
All the while the wife watched from a shrinking distance, suspicion crowding out any remnant of sanity in her eyes. How was she to know I was more attracted to her sister than to the husband.
I'd warned him to not...
It was cold, so cold. I had been held captive in this house for a little over 6 months now, and i was starting to go cabin crazy. The tiny oven was the only source of heat until my captor got home. I recalled the day i was kidnapped. I had been walking with friends in Central Park. Suddenly, a man grabbed me from behind and chloroformed my friends. I had been tied up, and had been laying in the back of a truck for a few hours before i saw where i was. It was al little house, in...
The sweetest honey was the one they daubed on his lips.
This wasn't really torture; not in the traditional sense. Instead of pain, he was given touches of pleasure.
Simple pleasures - gentle whispers, the smell of bread, the touch of soft wool against his cheek.
After a few days, he wondered if they really wanted him to talk, or if they wanted him to stay. If they wanted him to remain there, relying on them, content to be with them until the end of his days.
To call him a pet would be too extreme, but the principle was...