Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The droplets of drool fell like stones from the gaping monstrous mouth. Gusts of racid breathes portruded before it. Sckirrrrrrrrrrr. The earsplitting whistle of its call, feeling like nails were being dragged down a chalk board next to my ear.
More were coming. My fearful eyes could see the shadows dragging themselves along the ground.
Useless bloodied limbs, torn apart by the undergrowth hanging uselessly between their ferocious canines. Blood surrounded their snout.
They were coming. For me.
"I don't care if I get wet!"
Eric snatched at her hand, but Angel quickly pulled away. She let her hand extend beyond the umbrella's translucent canopy, its special shielding against radiation and chemical contaminants having been turned off despite Eric's warnings.
"You can't do that!" he cried.
"Why not?" she said. "It's been years since the fallout. Why use this stupid shield anyway? What difference does it make if things APPEAR normal?"
Tears streaked her lover's face, but he said nothing.
Disgusted with the futility of it all, she hit another button on the handle and turned off his...
i jumped off the bridge and hit the water.
OK, so i didn't judge the height of the bridge or he depth of the water, but i jumped nonetheless. instead of the sudden death i had anticipated, i found myself floating on top of the water. the bridge was about 5 feet high, but the water underneath was only four and a half feet deep, as deep as a normal swimming pool.
well, i'm still alive, which is kind of ironic because i didn't intend to jump off the bridge in the first place. but my friends yelled at me,...
It was cold, and soulless. It was mechanical, drunken and above all else it was heartbreaking.
I couldn't beleive it when I saw him in the crowd after all these years. The proverbial one who got away. It was even less imaginable that he would be the one to reach out to hold my hand, that he would be the one to pull me into his arms just as our song began to play.
The tickets for this concert cost a fortune, I had stayed up all night just to get through on the phone. I had brought a date...
He looked into the surface and his heart stopped a beat, two beats then three at what stared back. His chest caved inwards as a slow smile stretched and rippled across a paler face than his own. The eyes were grim and long and dead and they beat him into submission with a starving stare before he kicked his own ankle and fell to the ground, dirt scraping pits into the palms of his hands. He licked his lips and looked above about him. The roof of the hut looked like the inside of a boat falling from the sky...
Drowning in the sea. That was the trick of it. To be seen to swoon, to fall to the bottom. The pretend to expire. It was the pearls that weighed me down. They alway do. Spiros bought them for the moon. That is what he said. The moon. As if the moon had a price. All things had a price. He gave them to me in the back garden of the hotel under a moon that was more red that white. A bad luck moon. But the band played on in the gallery and couples in their best passed under...
Martin put the off-white china mug to his thin lips and took a long drink of his rapidly cooling coffee. His eyes scanned over the classified ads for the hundredth time but, once again, there was nothing. Nothing in his field, nothing in his area, nothing, nothing, nothing. The pen poised in his right hand tapped against the page angerly and he took another mouthful, swishing the lukewarm liquid between his cheeks.
"Good morning, pumpkin." Candice's bare feet padded along the bare hardwood behind him, and Martin soon found his girlfriend's arms wrapped tightly around his chest, her face buried...
Vanquished. Again.
How many times is this going to happen, just in the course of one day? How many times can you suffer defeat at the hands of your enemy? Even if that enemy is your coworker, how can you really stomach it happening over and over?
It's such a small thing, really. Who will empty the trash doesn't seem like something that could cause so much strife, but you're not going to do, and he's not going to do it, and it's just not going to get done. You keep looking up over your desk to see if it's...
She should have been writing. Instead, she watched the time slide away from her.
5'44". 5'32". 5'11".
What was this? she asked—not herself, but God, the heavens, the hall monitor, anybody but herself. Was this paralysis?
No. This was a choice. And even though she closed her eyes, she still couldn't get away from that.
4'09". 3'58".
Why not write? There was the prompt on the page. She could do this. She was good at this. She always had been, always, always. Write on command. Paper comes back; mark at the top.
She didn't work hard for years and take...
It's breathtaking how many times I've had to smell this. The curiosity overwhelms me. So begins the search for my companions. After all, who investigates strange smells without company? Speaking of company...where is everybody? This nose of mine struggles to pinpoint the four-legged friends I've come to know over these past few months.
Something is off.
"Skipper," I think to myself. At least that's what the farmer calls me. "You know better than this to delay the inevitable."
I strain, nose and ears working in tandem to take in the faint...wait...yes. there it is. The distant sounds of howling. Distress....