The conversation lasted two words. I survived.
That's what I usually told my girlfriends when they decided to end it with me after trying to deal with my post traumatic stress disorder. Those that began in 'rescuer mode' soon realised I was too much for them. The others that either were in lust with me or maybe after my money decided they would put up with anything if it was worth their while. But they all gave up in the end.
The recurring nightmare felt so real. Long empty corridor, bare walls and concrete floor. I saw him approach, tall,...
Sal knew it was too late the minute the whistle blew. That train had been keeping time in Millersville for twenty years and when its screech filled the air, everyone knew it was one in the afternoon. An eclipse could turn the day to night and no one would doubt it was in the PM if the train sounded. Heart racing and pulse pounding, Sal made a desperate dash down the road, passing the stable and skidding to a halt. "Now there's an idea." If some idiot wanted to leave a saddled horse loosely tied to this hitching post just...
The sound reverberated through the streets. Chant. Gregorian. Darkness illuminated by thousands of candles, human snakes weaving their way through the streets. This was the first time I'd visited Taize but knew it would not be the last.
Simon did not feel the same. Hated being surrounded, enclosed by people. Unnerved, anxious clinging onto me like a child instead of a man ten years older.
I felt at one with the crowd, heard the repetetive words flow through me, part of me for evermore. Tried to shrug away the insistent pulling at my coat sleeve, ignore Simon's shout in my...
The plumber did not arrive on time. Later I found out he'd been fishing in Plantation Lake, that place near Kingswood with the wooden shack, boats for hire and nasty looking employees that always gave me the shivers.
Luckily I managed to run the hot taps and circumvented a disaster with the overflow. Called in sick so I could monitor the situation, spent most of the time going between the bathroom, tv and excercise bike.
Tom, the plumber never did fix the problem. He drowned, his line tangled with something the few available witnesses described as 'unexplainable to identify'.
An...
It is surprising how much three tiny candles can illuminate an entire temple.
When I walked in through the main hall to follow the giant flickerings the painted themselves against the soar vaults of the holy place, I could sense the enormity surrounding me. But I could also catch brief sites of the buildings columns, painted windows, and ancient stones stacked centuries ago one atop the other by an as yet unknown process.
I proceeded down the long aisle where many large processionals had many years gone by had passed on their way to making some offering or another to...
I think that I shall never see
A sight so fine as irony
For all my life I lay in wait
To see a sight profound and great
This rosy glow that lights the sky
Answers every truth and lie
Every hope and all despair
Is wiped from mind and earth and air
Would that the sun had caused this glow
Sinking down in sunset low
Would that tomorrow it would rise
In sunrise warm and soft and wise
No shockwave yet, though it will come
The world will end and all fall dumb
Yon mass of rock that hurtles...
The dream had been wonderful, yet it would never be real.The first thing I did was tweet about it; hundreds of retweets showed I'd hit a nerve. Me, Christine, a twitter phenomenon. And all because I shared my dream (nightmare? No. Dream) of an ex-girlfriend becoming infected during the zombie apocalypse. Undead everywhere, and amongst them the bitch, at last, letting me have the final word.
Wish fulfillment with a chain saw, definitely severing our relationship. It had gone to her head. You had to hand it to her. Even with the plague, I still (for a moment) thought about...
Hello city, hello Amy's boyfriend way down there. Hello penny. Let's see if it's so, what I remember from 4th grade about what happens when you drop a penny off the Empire State. On this street we walked and I wanted to yell at people who cat called her and to ask them if they had mother's and shame them. Down by the sudsy Hudson River we laid out and looked at the buildings and talked about Kenya, about the merits of going away and trying to talk ourselves into a compulsion to stay. On that bench she cried at...
He set the plate before her. He watched her eat it clean.
"Where have you been?" he wanted to know.
Instead he said, "It's good to see you again."
She nodded at him, said something about being tired, bouncing around too many places, too many people. But he only heard, "I've spent every free moment with him, letting that stranger come inside me."
So his response probably sounded non-sequitur to her. "When's the last time you had a weekend to yourself?"
"A while. I don't know how long."
"Four weekends," he thought. "The weekend before that we went to the...
I'll do anything… No, not that!