Millions spent on public health are inflationary. This is why we should kill people when they're born. That's right. When a baby is born, you flip a coin. If it comes up heads, kill it. That's what they do in China, only they don't flip a coin. They say if the baby has a vagina, kill it.
And this is a little creepy for a six minute story, isn't it? I got the first line by opening a Kurt Vonnegut book to a random page and writing down the first line I saw. Everything flows from there.
The word flow...
It was because he was different, not like everyone else. That's what he told himself. That's what the mirror told him. Whenever he looked in it he was confronted by just how different he was. Whenever someone looked at him, he could see his difference in their eyes, in the way their eyes flickered away from him then back again. Unable to look at him. Unable to look away. Once he'd daydreamed about meeting a girl who couldn't see him, a blind girl. She'd fall in love with him because of his who he was, not because of what he...
My dad believed the island to be the end of a search for a cure for mom.
The promise of a healer that would finally reverse the soul destroying illness that was taking mom away from us.
Dad didn't care anymore what it would take, money, hope, nervous exhaustion from the endless searching, trying, failing, crying. He had to give it one more go.
Mom wanted to go home as soon as we got into the hotel room. She always wanted to go home even when she was in our house. She could only remember her childhood house and her...
They panic was reaching heart-stopping momentum now. Jake was sure that at any second his body would give up, surrender, break apart or explode or melt away into the once beautiful sea. It wasn’t beautiful any more. The fear had seen to that.
One minute having the time of their lives, the next…
“Shark!”
That one word was enough to instil panic into the entire group, even the captain, the tour guide. Everyone. And no one had known what to do – it hadn’t been covered in the onboard safety announcements at the beginning of the day, so many long,...
The dream was better than waking. I floated, all the past troubles seeming to dissipate before my very eyes. Luke was nowhere to be seen, which was a relief, because in days past he had haunted my dreams mercilessly. I noticed that there was no one else in my dream, just a thick, white mist. Like a feather bed, i laid in the unusally substantial mist, in a mystical dreamlike state. I saw a shape, a dark figure coming through the fog. It was Nyxie, my facility director. Her red hair floated like me, but she kept to the ground....
I fumbled about with my phone, waiting. She was going to be late, but I was always early. Damn nature and nurture. Or is it nurture and nature? What the hell, man. Concentrate.
She went to Northern Illinois. She got a degree in English and is currently working as a barista. God, what a stereotype.
It's ok, get out of your comfort zone.
Ok, I think that's her. Is that her? No, no. The picture of her didn't look like that. I am way too overdressed for this place.
And I hate tea. Why did I get tea? Should I...
He ran into the room, his heart pounding, and his clothes soaking wet.
"Mummy, Mummy!" he yelled, his face flushed and eyes gleaming with excitement.
"What is it, sweetheart?" I asked, my heart in my mouth, fearing the worst.
Surely nothing terrible had happened in those few short minutes since I'd turned my back and left him to his own devices?
Unconsciously scanning his body for weeping wounds, gaping gashes or odd shaped bones like a Men in Black zapper I began to relax.
"What's happened now?" I said, smiling at my golden child.
"Mummy, I rode up the hill...
The water was clear and the sky, a burden. That clear, opening water annexed from infinity by the murky, swollen sky. Everything the sky held glared and grimaced like sweaty bustlers at a flea market.
And then I look back at the water and eke out a smile before the groaning creak of the sky turning darker toward the night pulls out my grin like a bad tooth.
The water was clear, so clear I couldn't see the bottom.
Lousy sky.
The elephant dragged its feet. Since they were made of rubber, this made the task all the more difficult, as she pulled herself by her front legs across the linoleum floor. The intermittent squeals of her back feet dragging, followed by the silence as she readied herself for another pull, created the slow and steady rhythm of her despair. Why had the toymaker failed to provide her with decent appendages? What child wanted to cuddle up with a stuffed animal with hard-soled rubber feet? Why had fate seen fit to give her creator a pragmatic bent which resulted in her...