Pension. Never thought I would make it this far. The job was ridiculous, stand there, make sure the machine hit the same spot every time, stop the line when it missed and clear the jam as quickly as possible to get the line running as fast as you can.
I never thought of it as a career. I guess I never really thought of anything as a career. It paid the bills, put food on the table and clothes on the kids back. It help us make the house payments, the car payments, the TV payments. It was simple enough,...
Screw destiny.
I smashed the crystal ball against the sidewalk, jumping on it to make sure it really was destroyed. It couldn't tell me anything anyway.
I was abandoned on a doorstep as a baby by my mother, and I always knew I wasn't going to be like her. I wanted a big family that I could give all my love and attention to.
But I picked the ball up at a flea market, and while polishing it, saw a doctor's report. It said that I was infertile. I didn't want to believe it, but I've always been superstitious, so...
"I-I can't reach it," she choked out.
The small girl had been lying at the base of a tree in the woods, to weak to move, but too motivated to give up. Running away was not easy, but worth it.
Her cheek was bloodied and so were her legs.
Her rabbit left abandoned in a gaping hole in the tree. She dropped it, and now she couldn't get it back.
She twisted around painfully and poked her head into the hole to find an assortment of bugs making a home of the hole and of her rabbit.
The tears she...
She'd always come running when I called. The vampire girl that vanished at daybreak but warmed my bed at night, even though she was a cold-blooded creature.
She read my thoughts, knew when I wanted her, seduced me to the point where all I could do was imagine the next time she lay on top of me, kissing my hungry mouth, sucking my tongue.
Her name was Isabelle. She lived in a castle. Imprisoned for centuries. I believed her. Had to.
What was she really I didn't want to know.
After my wife left me I took to drink, drugs,...
I tried to avoid holding the parcel knowing what it contained but had to or else it would look suspicious. I know that Tom would be eager to open the well travelled box wrapped in thick brown paper covered in butterfly stamps and tied up with old string, secured with a familiar wax seal. He would probably visualise his wife dipping the wax stick in a candle, waiting for the melting to begin, carefully dropping a few blobs in the right places, hoping to avoid burning her fingers.
Wanda of course did not put lovingly baked cakes and pies into...
(Author's Note: To read Part 1, follow this link: http://sixminutestory.com/stories/somewhere-better.)
Green.
All around her was greenery, stretching beyond the horizons, undulating and flowing. If she had ever been outside the confines of the busy city, she might have compared it to endless fields of gently waving, emerald green wheat.
The city. Where had the city gone?! She had been there just a moment ago... Hadn't she?
She liked the city. At least, she thought she did. It was familiar. It was comfortable. It was scary at times, and intimidating, but it was a fear she *knew*, one she had always...
We had our pet unicorn stuffed today. Oh people will tell you it's odd to stuff your family pet. A bit grim. A bit strange.
My aunt Gemma said we'd turn up on one of those hoarding shows, pointing out the rows of stuffed cats and rabbits to the audience.
I don't think it's so strange. Captain Bluebell gave us years of enjoyment. I remember when we first got him. The way he couldn't quite walk yet. He wobbled around, smashing all of the china we kept on pedestals. I don't remember why we kept over a dozen vases on...
Candace wants all her glasses to look half-full, but Martin can't stop complaining. He's tried to keep his mouth shut when work is too busy and when he gets cut off on the road, he sometimes count from ten out loud.
But generally, Candace is too fat (thick!) and their house keeps feeling smaller (cozy!) with all of the things she hoards (collects!) that he's prone to throw some of the junk (trinkets!) at the wall in hopes that they shatter. When she sweeps up the mess, she hums the chimney sweep song from Mary Poppins.
Once a month, she...
"Welcome back! Our next contestants are the seven year old Billy and his abusive father Jim, from Fall River, Texas. Billy's first and only birthday party contained two hookers, heroin, coke and a lot of gun shooting, Jim's hobbies are NASCAR, lifting and drinking heavily, and apparently throwing awesome birthday parties! However only one of them get's to escape the family alive, tonight, when we play:
ESCAPE THE FAMILY - ALIVE!
Let's just jump right away into our first game, called:
TAKE A HIT, YOU LITTLE WUSS!
Here are the rules. Billy. You stand behind this line, while we shoot...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
Two weeks ago, she had rebelliously boarded a ship from the island of Taiwan, left her grandparents who had raised her, and traveled back to China to find her parents -- who she wouldn't have recognized at all. She had been sent off as a baby during the Civil War; no sane Republican would have wanted their children brought up where intellectuals like her learned mother and her professor father were being publicly humiliated, abused. It is why she, as a baby, was sent away in...