We had been the best of friends all though high school. It was summer after senior year and we would soon be off to our respective colleges. This was going to be one last slumber party; one last tribute to the way we had spent most weekends throughout the last four years.
Mindy had brought the tequilla, which was a recent development. I mean, slumber parties as freshmen didn't include booze. I furnished the barn, or rather my parents did. The night was soft and warm and the air was sweet with mown grass, and if you didn't mind the...
She unwrapped her sandwich and fed it to the pigeons, just as she did every day. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered making them in the first place, when she knew that she wasn’t going to eat them. And then she remembered the birds. How they would come hopping towards her when she sat on the same old bench, the paint long gone and no one caring enough to give it a new coat, the splinters of greyed wood sticking to her clothes as they grabbed at any chance to be free of their prison.
She understood how they felt....
She peered over her laptop screen, wishing that during her youth she had plucked her eyebrows into a thin line like her mother's - they always managed to make her look more stern than she every really was.
Right now, she would have given anything to be able to pull that off.
Somehow she'd managed to get the class quiet and at least convinced them into acting as though they were doing their work. But it had been a hard battle.
It wasn't that she viewed her entire career as a teacher as a war, just this class, and a...
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take. The thought kept running through Eddie's mind as he waited through another Dealer change. He removed his knock-off designer shades and attempted to rub away the hours of lost sleep. As the pair of pocket cards slid in his direction he affixed the shades back in place and took a deep breath. Contrary to popular belief perception is hardly ever brought on by a sweeping vignette of thoughts while staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night. Many times it arrives in moments of...
Fish meant for market was found dumped in a bin outside the school. The mother believed the rotting smell would disguise her hidden bundle beneath. Her post-birth addled brain forgetting only papers were supposed to be in that container and what she tried to dispose would be eventually found.
Margarita wasn't a bad person. She did what she thought best at the time. Took her baby to the church and left her on the steps timing so the priest would find it. The bloody towels, rags, her own clothing stuffed below the fish. She kept the umbilical cord and placenta....
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...
She kept her eyes down, on her shoes. People brushed past her, maybe impatiently. She didn't move, she didn't walk.
She waited for someone to take her hand, to try to talk to her, to lead her away. It didn't happen. No one looked at her. Nothing happened, and she heard nothing. Better that way, because how could she explain anything?
Making the decision, she walked over to the bench, sat down at the very edge, across from a display of vacuum cleaners. Still, she stared at her feet.
Without warning, he was standing in front of her, cheeks still...
Fourteen fish
bunched
like a silver
artichoke
They are traveling
farther
than their fathers
who never
left the river
Their futures
are
in lemons
and
bread crumbs
I was not interested in the small poster in his hand. My eyes were on his face. He was the one I had been searching for. Member of that cult, the one that took my daughter away from me. He might have just been an innocent new recruit like she had been all those years ago but the hatred in my heart didn't care. He represented evil and someone had to pay.
I walked over and pretended to be interested in what he had to offer. He explained the organisation would give me peace of mind if I signed up...
He didn't even pack. He just picked up a satchel and left. He knew it'd been over for a while, but last night was when he was finally able to summon the courage to do it.
When people heard what he'd done, they'd offer their condolences. But he didn't see it as a sad thing. He saw it as a new beginning, as new horizons.