I'll miss the way the breeze would blow hair into his eyes, and the way I would brush it away, asking him when he was getting it cut, even though I knew he never would.
I'll miss the way the sun would warm the tops of my breasts when he lifted my shirt over my head, and the way his day-old stubble both hurt and excited me when he bent to suck one nipple, then the other, into his mouth.
I'll miss the way the dried grass felt beneath my bare back when he laid me down and pressed himself...
"I know what you're after," growled the doctor, gripping her clipboard like it bestowed her the authority of the Pope with his Holy Bible. "All of a sudden it's 'oh, my back aches!', 'Doc, I've got migraines!'
"Migraines. Ha," she sneered. "And you!"-- Possessed white finger shivering in the direction of the wrinkled face before her -- "You think CANCER will get you your hands on that stuff? You're nothing but a common criminal. A druggee. Shame."
I yanked Grandma out of the chair. We'll seek her medical marijuan
"Remind me why I'm doing this again?" I asked my sister as I folded the paper.
"Because you love me."
"Right," I rolled my eyes as I finished the fold. "Done."
I showed my handiwork.
"That's suppose to be a paper crane?" My sister questioned. "It looks like a crane that has been run over by a steam roller."
"I tried," I said as I added it to the tiny flock of paper cranes we had be making for the past half an hour. "Again, remind me why we're doing this."
"Because, in myth, if you make a thousand paper...
The elephant dragged its feet, following behind the child experiencing the wet sand of a beach for the first time. Its right leg was longer than its left, the result of being constantly tugged along with the 3-year-old wherever he went. The elephant was much loved around its trunk and ears, its belly crisscrossed with patches from old flannel shirts, worn jeans, tattered baby blankets. If not for its owner, the elephant thinks it wouldn’t even be an elephant anymore.
"Come along, Dylan," the man said as he scooped his son up into his arms. They were halfway back on...
The border. He had. To find. The border. He'd made this trip a hundred times before and each time the damn thing moved. When he thought of it - if he thought of it at all - he imagined it as some kind of mystical shimmering veil. Except you couldn't actually see it. Couldn't map it. It might be there with the next step or it could take a thousand more and he never knew which it would be. He was pretty sure he'd been walking straight for it but... had he just been circling? Was he even heading in...
It was the fall that surprised me most.
I had never intended to move to the Northeast. Strange set of circumstances. Long story. Really long. Maybe not too long to relate, but longer than I'd like it to have. I just sort of ended up there.
Anyway, I got there in early December. I thought, having come from California, that that was "winter".
That's not winter.
Winter is bleak. Winter is white death. Winter is hell -- not just for Chekhov, mind you. For Vermont, too.
The first week I was there, I was talking about how poorly-equipped Southern California...
"Mister Cloone?" said the sergeant as he sat down. "You know why we're holding you, right?"
Cloone shrugged and leaned back. "Fascism? Something something smokes?"
Sergeant Miller took off his own glasses. "We're stopping you here at the Richford/Quebec crossing because you were smuggling Cuban cigars into the country. Why would you do that? You didn't even try to hide them."
"It's the Hemingway in me. Cuba. And 'fuck the system'."
"You think that smuggling cigars makes you Hemingway?" asked Miller.
"I think it's a good start," replied Cloone.
"We have the boycott in place for a very good reason....
She opened the envelope and screamed. Then she opened the next envelope, screamed, set it down. Then the next, screamed, set it down. Next, screamed, down. Next, screamed, down.
A strange ritual. Letting out some kind of pent up anger and frustration. She had drawn a crowd, as one letter after another would be opened, followed by a scream, then the laying down of the envelope. For hours on end she did exactly the same thing. Open, scream, down. Soon, the crowd had grown quite large. The police arrived, and stood for a few minutes, watching this bizarre ritual. One...
WHAP!! The sniper rifle cracked harshly then a second later an echoing crack sounded back across the valley. A few hundred feet below a crawler's head exploded.
Daniel smoothly reloaded and set his eye back to the scope. "Clear for now. They'll be confused by the sound, but look lively. Your boy's on the High Street heading into trouble."
Off to the edge of his vision, a runner… Runner Five? Runner Eight? broke cover, trailed by Peter. They reached Luke just as he turned the corner where a lone Zom was shambling by the corner shop.
***
I see Mummy....
So close, yet so far. Matey the Pirate never understood the phrase until these last few days of his life. The woodpecker would get closer and closer to the nub that was left of his leg, chipping away at the wooden peg that was left. He had to make it to shore. The ship was not going to last. The gapping hole in the bottom was filling the ship with too much water. This all meant that Matey would have to float to shore. Alone, he had not enough buoyancy to make it. In such a situation he though could...