The captain for the second time this week, finds himself in his dress uniform. He is standing beside the father and widow who have no knowledge that the man offering his condolence, is the one who took the mentally unstable lieutenant's life. They had been informed that he had suffered a seizure in the night and passed away. Father and widow accepted this, because to them at least his suffering was over.
As the captain watched them give thanks and honor to the late Lieutenant Johnathan MacKenzie MacMillan for his service, he wishes he could tell them of his deceit,...
Potatoes.
The bane of my son's existence.
I set the plate down in front of him with a futile hopefulness that today might be the day that he wouldn't wrinkle his nose and recoil as if it were something deeply offensive. But it wasn't. And he did.
"I don't LIKE potatoes," he growled, glowering up at me.
His father frowned and made to reprimand his son's insolence, but I held up a hand to silence him.
"These aren't just any potatoes," I declared with authority, "These potatoes are grown by superheroes."
My four year old looked skeptical, but as he...
The wind blew across the plains, picking up clods of dirt as it ran past, and I gripped my son's shoulder, as if by some instinct. Soon the dust would blow through the cracks in our log cabin, and the kitchen -- the tiny corner we called the kitchen -- would soon fill with what looked for all the world like soot. That we could take. The ground and the wind had been trying to kill us for years. We were used to it. But lately we'd had to contend with spiders. Tarantulas. Tough sons of bitches that put their...
"Quack quack quack!"
*Translation: OH NO! BP!
"Quack quack quack quack."
*Translation: I'll have to move to another pond now...
"Quack quack..."
*Translation: Stupid #$#@%$%$#^#$ humans.
"Quack quack quack..."
*Translation: Or maybe I'll just steal all their rubber duckies. See how they like losing something.
"QUAAAACKKK!"
*Translation: MWAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Mr Duckie went to become the Robin Hook of all ducks, stealing rubber duckies from all the human children and all the grownups who still like flotation toys. Right now he has a large organization, SOPWRD (Save Our Pond With Rubber Duckies) and has declared Ernie from Sesame Street as Duck Worlds...
Life Drawing
Staring up at me from behind the glass, a mouth that never seems to quite close and two bulbous eyes. They follow my finger as it traces lines up and down the screen, creating bubbles in its wake. My friend, golden scales and graceful fins, swims in his electronic cage, making loops and pinwheeling along with the actions of my moving digit. He doesn't seem to know his home, the aqua-blue paradise of his existence filled with fiery coral, sunken ships, and bright shining trinkets is only a dream - one that is not even his own.
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs; a small boy and his even smaller sister.
"What are we looking at, Jack?"
Jack frowned and shushed his sister, pointing conspiratorially at the darkness between the slats of the steps.
They stayed that way for several minutes, scrunched up tight, necks disappearing into shoulders, rocking forwards on their toes.
"There, Arianna, look!"
He pointed towards a patch of darkness that had begun to twist and swirl in very much the way darkness shouldn't. Two yellow eyes blinked and stared back at them.
A voice like poison treacle spoke into the silence.
"It's...
Shannon sat up, her eyes wide open. She wasn't sure if she was awake or asleep. She looked around the room (dirty socks, cat puke in one corner, empty Miller cans, a laundry basket filled with clean clothes) and wished it was all unfamiliar. She looked at the man next to her. His back was smooth and tanned. A tiny mole winked at her from his left shoulder blade. She wished he was a stranger.
Shannon lay back down. The pillow was damp with sweat, her sweat. Had she been dreaming or coming out of a fever?
"Where are you...
"Should I do it?"
"What if I am found out?"
The struggle raged on in Wendy's head. It had all been too much for her. She had lost her job just the month before. Now she was struggling to keep the strands of life together. There was no food in the refrigerator, bills were piling up, there were too many empty wine bottles and worst of all, her friends no longer called her.
"What can I do," she asked herself. "There's just no other way than this."
Sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the oven, she struggled with...
This isn't right. I shouldn't have fled up here, among the scaffolding and girders. Only birds can stay perched up in these heights, gazing recreationally at the world so foreign to their own. They don't want me here, I don't belong.
I make no excuses for myself, but sometimes you just have to go. Something bursts in your head, that little reserve energy you were saving for an extra day suddenly gets injected full-force into your veins, and you take off. Sometimes it takes you to a cafe somewhere downtown. And sometimes it storms you up onto the hull of...
And so another group assembled. The moon shone like the eye of a great forgotten deity, peering down on the hooded figures who worked tediously on the pyre between them.
Old branches, gnarled and bony, reached into the pyre as more hoods broke into the meadow. No one knew why they had been gathered here, in the deep wood that bordered the black lake. But, like their ancestors, the call to arms was one they could not deny.
And as sudden as they all appeared, a creature formed from within the darkness, dark green flesh glimmering with the faint caress...