It was his favourite shirt. But in the rush to leave, it had been forgotten on the line. She stared at it every day from her window. Today it was an especially bitter reminder as she stood at the window, mixing up a batch of cookies.
The cookies were for her son's funeral. The son who had worn that shirt day in, day out, until the day he left. The son who had climbed that tree as a boy, played hide and seek in that yard. The teenager who brought girls home to kiss behind the big tree when he...
In hindsight, the solution was obvious.
It was staring me right in the face the entire time but for some reason I had a hard time coming to terms with it.
It wasn't really his fault, in a way I guess you could say it was my fault. I was the one who always wanted to try new things and that night, he had been nowhere to be found. I jumped in with both feet, never once thinking about the consequences.
It was easy for me, I had no ties to anyone or anything. Well except for him.
He, on...
'Pension.'
'No, come on, you stil saying it like an American.'
'I *am* an American.'
'Yeah but you're in Paris now.'
'You mean Paree.'
'Piss off. Now say it again. Pawn she on.'
'Nah. Too hard. It's pension.'
'I'm not going through with this unless you at least try.'
'Fuck it. I'm not. Grab the overhead bags and let's get off the plane.'
'No. I'm not getting of the plane until you at least try.'
He checked the tickets. 'How much does it cost to change the return flight?'
'You want to stay longer?'
'No. I'm changing it to the...
I couldn't sleep with her next to me. Her gentle snoring, calming to almost anyone else, was absolutely maddening to me. It was nails being dragged down a chalkboard, squealing and begging for everyone for miles to be quiet long enough for the mouse dragging its nails to be heard.
I wasn't in love with her. I didn't even love her, not for even the briefest of moments. A marriage of convenience? Who was this marriage convenient for? I knew that she slept with other men behind my back and, conversely, I knew that I slept with other men behind...
They had come up this mountain every wensday evening for the last three years, from the creation of there IOGT-lodge. The first one in this country and now there outdoor meetings was to come to an end. The lodge house was soon to be finished and there common soberity had a place to live
Indeed in a hundred years another generation will look at this photo and now the story some even beeing related to the heroic pioners of the movement.
How the small movement for soberity started in New York state now lived on and inspired so many generations...
The gate closed behind them. Ahead of them stood the fearsome Morley house, said to be haunted with the ghosts of the former occupants, who had been killed years ago.
Jana, the youngest of the four, turned pale. "Are you sure it's safe to be here?"
The second-oldest, Robert, scoffed, "There's no such thing as ghosts."
"I'm more worried about Dad finding out we're not in bed," Jason, the second-youngest, said.
"You guys are such wusses. C'mon!" Angela, the oldest, ran up the hill to the house, opening the door. As soon as she stepped in, though, she ran out...
It was hard to send a message in a bottle when you didn't even have the bottle.
Harry sighed as he put the folded bit of paper into the stream, hoping it would be carried to someone who would find him. Someone with better navigational skills than he had anyway. He couldn't even write his location, because he hadn't the slightest Goddamn idea where he was. GPS didn't do a hell of a lot of good with a dead phone, and if he hadn't slipped down that muddy slope...
Nevermind.
He rested along the stream's edge and looked up at...
"I couldn't sleep with her next to me. Each night, I'd have a hard time trying to sleep. She was everything I could hope for and I stressed each night, as I'd try to drift off, that she'd realize one day I wasn't good enough for her. Thank god each morning she was there for me."
A married man, Tom, who lived outside of New York, was taking the train, as usual into town. Tom was married to Rosie. Margie, a friend of Rosie’s, who was also taking the train, saw him talking to a woman.
Tom appeared to be...
A small woman in her mid-20's sits in a doctor's office staring, seemingly at nothing, right in front of her, as if peering deep into herself. Her eyes, drooping at the small corners, glistening slightly as they search from left to right and then from right to left. A deep sigh lodged in the cavernes of her being finally escapes.
The door opens and in shuffles an older man, gray speckled hair, deep wrinkles on his forehead and around his eyes from squinting at translucent sheets held up to lights, his glasses resting on his nose several inches from his...
It was Andy from the grave.
"Can you speak up?" Caroline, distracted anyway by something on TV, couldn't understand him.
"I said it's Andy. From the grave. That's the muffling, the grave."
"Well, it doesn't help you're such a mumbler anyway. Wait, do you mean you're actually calling from the coffin?"
"Not really," said Andy, "but I am dead somewhere. I don't feel like I'm in a box. I feel like I'm in a cloud."
"That could be the coffin. I saw it," Caroline remembered, "it was plush."
"That's nice."
"Listen, did you want something? I've gotta head out in...