Sam pulled the tuque tighter around his ears and hunched into the wind. Spring, hah! With no snow to melt, there was no way to tell the difference between today's nasty wind and yesterday's blistering sun.
He banged his way into Tim's and leaned a little too close to the muscle mass in front of him, seeking warmth, if not comraderie. The dude turned, looked down into Sam's wrinkles and coughed. Once. With phlegm.
Sam stood firm and bumped into the plaid workjacket when the line shuffled forward.
When he heard the words, "Large double double...and a Boston Cream for...
All I could do was stare down at the text book and pretend that I was listening to the class going on around me. I just wanted to be free again. I flicked between the pages and the past documented in the battered book. I wonder if when those sailors set out that they even thought for a glimmer of a second that their whole adventure would be covered by a short paragraph in a 10th grade history book and a photo that barely even grasped what their lives were like and how tragic that journey was. I knew that...
He set the plate before her. She looked at him with greedy eyes. Seth sighed as he walked back to the kitchens. This is how it was every Thursday. She'd come in, sit, ask specifically for him and order. She had an unhealthy fascination with him that he found weird and he shuddered every time he saw her.
It was becoming more frequent, the amount of times he saw her. He'd see her at the bus stop, when he walked home from the apartment, and obviously at work. He wanted to find out what it was she wanted with him,...
He’d always thought of Malory as a cat person. She referred to cats in conversation energetically and often, so when he visited her apartment he expected to meet a few. Malory set him straight. She was two when her parents gave Bo and Greco away. Mama and Dad, three children under four, an ailing dog and two cats were too much. They could not all be borne. Rip was on meds for anxiety, his pee pooling in the old floorboards. The cats threw his kibble at him and shed disdainful tufts. When Rip and the baby both stopped sleeping through...
He heard two doors smash and with a loud screech and a blinding beam of light, the door to the back opened. He expected the three masked men to open, but found a woman instead. "Is your name Martin?" "Who are you?", he asked. "I'm no one, until you tell me your name." His eyes almost fully adapted to the brightness and he could now see her clearly. She was wearing all black, except for a jeans jacket. She seemed to shiver in the cold, and he couldn't help but notice, that she's kind of cute.
There wasn't much more he could say. At this point they had been arguing for hours and it had slowly spiraled in to complete silence, neither one willing to say the first word, to break the ice (again) so to speak. Both facing away from the other, arms crossed. Defiance. Why is it that sometimes adults can act like children? Children are masters of the silent treatment. Then again, children are just that - children. It means so much more when it's your partner refusing to talk. And you not wanting to 'lose' by talking first. That's all it is...
Water. Surrounded her from every direction on the huge cruise ship. She loved being out in the ocean, looking out as far as she could see and seeing nothing but water.
Her husband, on the other hand...
"Honey, please get up. Open your eyes and see!"
He shook his head, grasping tighter to his paper bag. "Shouldn't have allowed you to talk me into this...never should have listened to you."
She sighed, thinking her husband sounded so sickly and confused. Sad thing is he never threw up, loaded up on motion sickness meds weeks in advanced, and he barely felt...
Standing on the ledge, it seemed so surreal to him. It was like an out of body experience. He couldn't remember deciding to go to the roof. He certainly didn't remember deciding to do what he was about to do. It was almost humorous how much it felt like an out of body experience, almost. He looked down at his clothes and thought of all the different things he could have worn for this. It's odd the details that come into your mind in times of crisis and stress. I guess the devil really is in the details. He was...
The key couldn't break.
Forged by the hand of fate
In the fires of adversity
Her love would mold
The white-hot metal
Into the shape it was meant to take
Then
Cooled by her touch
Quenched with desire
It would unlock
Anything
100 feet away. She had only been 100 feet away.
I could have caught up with her, stopped her maybe, but my feet were rooted to the one spot, and hers were just about to float out over the edge.
She turned and smiled and waved just a little, her hand moving from side to side, like we saw the Queen do once on television.
Then she jumped.
Then my feet decided they were free to move as I wanted them to and I ran to the edge. I looked out and saw her head break the surface of the...