The pistol was cocked... Ready to go. I didn't know what to do...
Should I shoot? Should I run? It was a question which required some thought. But I had no time to think.
I needed to think back to my college philosophy classes. Fight or flight. Talk or smoke.
So... I reached into my pocket slowly, all the while showing my pistol...
"Just let me show you my credentials"
hen I dropped my pistol. Then I ran.
The pain was gigantic.
No, no wait, that wasn't the right word. What was the right word?
Around him people were shouting, shells were exploding, shots were being fired. But he was oblivious to that.
All he could do was lie there and try to find the word.
Someone was saying something close by. "You just hold on in there Billy, you just hold on, y'hear?"
Billy? For a moment the name didn't mean anything to him. Then he remembered that it was his own.
"It'll all be okay, you'll be okay." Another voice was talking to him.
Of course...
She was the most delicate girl in town. Small, pixieish, with willowy limbs and and small features placed evenly on her round face. She dressed delicately, too, with long, floaty skirts and light fabrics such as cotton and lace. She seemed to float when she walked, flicking her skirts and jumping lightly, like a fawn. But her eyes were, well, disturbing. electric green, with long, slit, vertical pupils, like a cat's. I wondered who she was, and where she came from. But one day, she just, dissapeared. Not a trace of her was found. one day, they found her at...
The day after tomorrow, this will all be over.
"You always say that," she whispers, as she tucks her feet up under herself and wraps her arms around her knees.
"One day it'll be true." He answers, heavy boots clunking on the wooden floorboards as he made his way over to the girl. "I got you something to eat." He handed her a sandwich and leant against the wall to watch her.
"How many days has it been?"
"It would be easier to tell you in weeks."
"Just let me go, please." They had discussed this many times, the talk...
"No, absolutely not, that's completely ridiculous."
"But why, John?" asked Amy, staring at the tigers in the enclosure. "They're just big cats. It can't hurt."
John snorted, his unique way of showing contempt, disgust and amusement all in one foul sound. "They're tigers, Ames. Tigers. You know, man eating wild animals? They'd sooner eat us than live with us. You're mental."
"But I want one. And you said you'd get me whatever I wanted. You promised. It's my birthday." Amy pouted and stamped her foot.
John rolled his eyes. "Within reason, sweetheart! I mean within reason. And don't stamp around...
I'm not sure how it will end between us. I am not sure about the middle. I can't even promise that I'll remember how it began.
But what I can promise is that in years to come, your friend or your girlfriend or your child will ask you to tell the story of us. and when they do, I can promise you that you will smile.
I won't matter how it ended or how it started. In that moment, you'll pause, and smile because you'll remember the bit that made it great in between.
"She was an optimist" You'll say....
Time is right in front of me a constant reminder of where and when I need to go,go,go. Time tells me how to be according to my calendar.
We stopped along the path and he leaned back into the tree as if it were a place to rest. He deemed it so and there I took a photograph. We were late and time wasn't on our side so we were going to thank time and hold it tight against ourselves. We would rock it to sleep so that we could be free to enjoy the path. At the end of...
(To read Part 3, follow this link: http://sixminutestory.com/stories/somewhere-better-part-3.)
"Choose as you please," said Someone Good. "Surrender to the breeze, or fight for control. Which do you value: predictability, or potential. The known and the now, or the unknown, the good?"
As the air whipped in gusts around her, gripping her, twisting her, she struggled. Within herself, she wrestled for a choice. Would she allow herself to be carried up by these winds of change?
Somehow she knew that this was a defining moment. It was here, in the borderlands of Somewhere Better, that she could either fight her way back...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She had just made it home. It was 11:58 p.m. The night would end in a couple of minutes, and with it, her glittering ruby gown, the silken slippers, and the jade hairpins keeping her silken locks in its elaborate up-do. But for now, she would savor the evening she'd just had: eating the most sumptuous food she'd ever had, mingling with the guests she'd once called neighbors, and most of all, dancing in the yellow throne room with the prince's half-brother.
the pumpkin
The shapes were obstructing my view. I couldn't even look out the front window of the car for the shapes. i was taught what a circle, square and rectangle were when I was a small child, but now I've forgotten. I've forgotten it all. Nothing remains from preschool, not even the color blurred crayon drawings from Mrs. Couch's class. The only sign I know is peace. If only peace could get me from point a to point b. If only I could find my way through the traffic that way. Little speck of dust look circular, but they aren't they...