She didn't look at him. She couldn't. He used to be her father. He used to buy her sunflower seeds at the little convenience store near their home. She used to sit on his shoulders as he walked the dirt road, both of them searching the skies for the crows they could here.
He told her stories of a time when her mother dressed her in frilly dresses with lacy bloomers. He told her of how she would look all over the yard for Easter Eggs hidden within easy reach of her tiny little hands. He told her stories about...
Drudgery of the everyday. There's really nothing else to explain it. Banality of sadism. John, standing at the dump, Alka Seltzer pill wrapped in a piece of bologna for the birds. Has he ever thought what a bird might feel while its innards explode? That's not really the point. He wants to know if it can work. If he can leave a wake of destruction with nothing but everyday objects.
He watches the bird gulp down the bologna and retake flight. He sees it hesitate, and pop, it falls from the air, guts hanging out of its mouth.
Adam, working...
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...
I looked out over the masses. Between me and my goal milled hundreds of the worst sort of pedestrians. Tourists. Somewhere across the piazza a girl, and her girl, waited.
This date...more than any other...I could not fuck up.
I started across the sunstruck stones, their heat searing even through my shoes. The picnic basket in my hand no longer seemed so grand an idea as I sought to twist and push through any gap that presented itself.
Didn't these fools know that I had someplace I needed to go?
Every yard of progress seemed to cost me more time...
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...
Daring to be noticed for the first timein her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
The room fell silent as she began to speak croakily at first and with a slight tremor in her voice. But, as she continued, her words became clearer ad sweeter by the second. He was transfixed at the way her eyes began to sparkle. They were bluer than he remembered and the delicate flush in her cheeks added much to her delicate beauty. In all the weeks thay had been attending the group he hadn't realised just how lovely she was. He...
If we never speak again, there will be so many things I've never said. There will be no record of the thoughts that have been chasing each other around in my head. There will be no reason to remember me. You will never know the truth about what could have been - what I wanted us to be. I will never get to make you understand. If we never speak again...
"Wait!"
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....
She opened the envelope and screamed.
This was not the day to be squeamish. This was the day her daughter would be returned. Unharmed.
The finger was the wrong size and shape. John, when he overcame his initial shock, told her it was plastic.
They had both made the decision not to tell the police, followed the kidnapper's instructions to the letter.
So why was the envelope sent? A reminder of what could happen or was there something else going on?
Whilst Megan was making a cup of tea, John wondered whether to tell her about the tiny photo he...
A figure made of darkness, shadow. Silent. As I try to ignore my phantom I diligently type at my keyboard, words flow, meaningless and easy. This job is slowly driving me mad. I shiver and tell myself it has nothing to do with the shade silently observing me. How could it? There is no shade. If I were to turn, look directly at it, that would be the end. Or the beginning I suppose, rather depends on how you look at it. The end of sanity, the beginning of full fledged madness. How many years have I struggled to ignore...