Spinning. Spinning. Spinning. That is all she knows now.
"You'll become dizzy soon," he whispers in her ear. She smiles deliriously as he turns her around, spins her again. His hands, big and strong, fit around her waist perfectly.
"Spin," she tells him. "Spin." Again he twirls her. She is tiny in front of him. She smiles again.
The world has become a colorful blur around her. In this spinning she can forget everything. Maybe her past blurs behind her now, and all the lies blur into something deeper, into truth. Maybe this way everything can blur and blur till...
There is a crow somewhere in the trees, unseen but seeing all. There are a million tiny eyes beneath the grass that feel our footsteps and send out warnings.
Somewhere in the world is a man who would do us harm if we were to cross his path at this moment. It's midnight. A few cars drive past us, and each might contain a demented murderer.
The moon shows its bellyful of craters, and some of the stars are planets. There are a million tiny eyes up there somewhere looking out at us.
This is the eve of something momentous....
Joshua parked in front of the iron gate, irritated at this sign, just one of many from his absentee father. He was never there when he needed him. Where was he when he was six and skinned his knee riding his first bike? When he brought home his report card? When he needed help getting into college?
His father wasn't there when his mother died. Where was the hand of the older man when he needed comfort, standing at the grave of his closest family on a deceptively bright and sunny day? Where was he when the accident took his...
It wasn't easy to stack the gold bars in the cellar. Very heavy. I kept one in my bedroom so I could look at it whenever I wanted. Part of me was trying to warn there was something strange going on, another (the greedy part) knew that it was synchroncity that worked this for me.
Cousin Marty told me about the new shop between the Chinese Grocery store and the old-fashioned chemist. Strange as I'd never noticed the shop even though it was supposed to have been there for the last month. Marty showed me the rare whisky he'd bought,...
Tremain's exhibit had been the talk of the New York press, but Lorenzo had resisted all invitations to attend until now. The reason he gave was always the same: as a Lower East Side resident the thought of trudging to Williamsburg was too much. It was a rote answer, but had worked until his editor called upon him to cover the event.
So, pass in hand, he hopped the train to Brooklyn and made his way to the implacable studio with it's red litten windows and strangely unsettling industrial facade.
Once inside, he was met by a circle of art...
I was mesmerized by the number of mirrors it took to cover the surface area. I began calculating in my head, when suddenly my arm was yanked forward by a woman wearing enough hair spray to suffocate the entire discotheque. Her smile was wide and gregarious and I counted the teeth exposed by her ruby red lips. She shouted something at me, leaning her head in a coy yet inviting manner. We stepped on the color-changing tiles and I estimated the surface area by counting the squares on the perimeter. The beat increased and my heart pumped faster to match....
I rarely watch the news.
Except for that one time when I did turn on the news to catch breathless commentary of the desk crew as the news chopper puttered over the train tracks and there was a man standing on the tracks. The man wore black, his face draped in black and he held a sword in his hand--oh not just a sword, he had one of those Samurai Katanas aloft.
At least I think it was a Samurai Katana, my only experience with those was what I saw on "Kill Bill" and the katana letter opener I had...
PUNCH
Graham Pererson was a murderer. He killed people. Often.
Under the guise of a little old man he scoured the late evening streets for his victims. He carried a small bag and a walking stick.
He had a nicely worked out system which had, to date, never failed him.
And so tonight, April 1, he locked his door behind him and headed towards the suberbs.
They were starting to head home in groups of two and three from their nights of debauchery. He hated them. All of them.
A young woman seperated from her group and turned a corner....
"Dammit it's cold today." Bard pulled his hat further down over his forehead and huddled into his fur. "This shit just ain't worth it, Jake." The mule nudged his shoulder and tugged on the lead. He knew where warmth was, as well as his grain.
Man and beast drudged along the logging trail beneath the cold, thin light of the winter sun. Behind them clouds piled up over the horizon, snow dark and ominous. Bard could hear the wind starting, a distant rush of sound bending tree branches and pushing the storm closer.
"Two more miles and we're home," he...
I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead.
I suppose you want to know what happened. It was Geoff. In the bedroom with a vase. Not a very imaginitive death, really. But there you go. I went from a person to a statistic in the blink of an eye.
Dying is an odd sensation. Like when you're really drunk or hungover and the room spins when you sit up. It's just like that. I watched as he ran around wiping up the blood, hiding the...