"Who are you?" Gene didn't want to know the answer, but hurled at the woman sitting across the cafe table regardless. It was because of her that he was alone, it was her fault his wife no longer slept at his side.
She sucked at her cigarette, delivering her answer on a ribbon of viscous blue smoke. "Heather. Who're you?"
Gene, ever the copywriter, bit his tongue as his mind snatched the apostrophe from her words. 'Whore' he wanted to scream at the girl who shared the bed of the only woman he'd ever fucked.
'Liar,' the little voice in...
Smell of moss, picked up by wind and lifted by trees. Flash of fire-rimmed eyes, toss of disdainful hair, gold-threaded-with-crimson. Derisive eyes and a tight little mouth, quick to contempt and slow to praise. Slender hands and slender frame roped the man in as easy as you please, and for what seemed like a thousand years promises of glittering gold kept her tethered to him like a
One scoop chocolate, one scoop strawberry, it was amazing they hadn't seen each other for twenty five years but he could recall her favorite ice cream tastes. Wow she though,t he really did remember everything about them, maybe he was sincere, maybe he did love her, and never forgot about their deep, close, tender relationship.
"When I saw you again just now my heart really skipped a beat" he said softly, "I mean look at you, you have hardly changed at all, you are beautiful,l you look just the same, you look,well radiant" He was gushing with compliments, surely he...
(To read Part 2, follow this link: http://sixminutestory.com/stories/somewhere-better-part-2.)
Gigantic.
The voice was gigantic, though how such powerful sound came out of such a small creature was beyond her.
The furry animal was sitting back on its haunches in the tall emerald grass, looking up at her as if anticipating something.
She shifted uneasily. "You said you call yourself Someone Good?" she said. "What kind of a name is that?"
"We name ourselves by our attributes," said the creature, in its gigantic voice, which seemed to be full of every meaningful thing. "We are good," it continued. And from behind her,...
Tears dripped down her cheeks. She was alone. Finally, sadly, happily alone.
Her husband was searching for her. She prayed that he would not find her. She had managed to escape her home while he searched for weapons to use against her. When he stomped towards the kitchen, dripping angry sweat and hurling abuse, she thought of the knives.
She didn't remember how she got between her home and the doorway. All she knew was that she was safe, for the time being.
Where next? She had no family. Her friends were his friends or the wives of his friends....
I wanted to give him everything I had. He was my love, and I knew, at long last, what I wanted out of life.
I wanted him.
Foolishness, of course. We couldn't have been more different if we had been created that way. Still, I tried. Someone once told me that you should always reach for the stars. Whether you catch one or not, at least you will have risen above the mud for a while.
That's why I ran for Congress, because I thought that was where my destiny lay. When the corruption scandal was laid at my feet,...
Norman was a doctor. He was a doctor because he was good at fixing things, and at some point in his life he determined that the most important things that needed fixing were human beings. So he became a doctor.
He looked rather doctor-ish, in his trenchcoat, his traveling case of medical supplies and his pattern baldness. He was friendly, having the bedside manner that everyone expected of a good doctor.
The day that the sun became sick, people all over the world panicked. Some rioted, looted, killed one another, for in a world that was nearing its end, one...
"Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god. I think there's something underneath the bed."
Jacob sighed, rolling over and twisting the blankets in an infuriating fashion. "Anna, you're twenty-five years old. Don't you think you're a little old for this?" Of course, he would say that.
Anna twisted the blankets right back. Blankets were protection. Blankets were life. If she were covered with the blankets and Jacob were not, the rules dictated that Jacob would be eaten and Anna would be spared. Everyone knew that. But Jacob wouldn't let this go without a quarrel.
"Jesus, Anna! I'm cold! It's...
It was the fall that surprised me the most.
I had been running, running so hard so fast that, when I finally stopped behind the closed fire door, I could feel my lungs burning from the cold air filling them with each harsh breath that I took. Placing a hand against the cold metal door I leaned over and peered down the dirty stairwell, the only sound that I could hear was the sound of my own panting until a door several floors down flew open, echoing loudly as it hit the brick and mortar wall.
I hadn't said a...
It seemed a good idea to tell the kids to hide behind the bars when the boy went berserk. Glue sniffing was the first suspicion but when we found the numbers appearing all over his skin, a priest was summoned. 666 isn't the kind of thing you normally expect to see on young skin, measles, chicken pox, blackheads, sunburn is a yes. But numbers? That was plain weird.
The exorcist prayed, sprinkled holy water and blessed the boy by putting his hand on his forehead. 666 kept appearing until there wasn't a millimetre of untouched skin.
Then, just to confuse...