Pleasure. Burn. They're the only two words on the whole page - in the whole book if he was honest - that he had read and actually remembered. The rest was a jumble of names, bad descriptions, inplausible mixes of action and consequence.
Pleasure, the word just rolled off the tongue, almost like a cat unfurling itself and stretching lazily, purring as it spots some new distraction.
Burn, more akin to an explosion, though with the same purring quality, it flooded into his ears a lot more passionately than pleasure did, filled his mind with images, tortorous landscapes with dark...
I knew it would be two foggy to see the dock from the top of Crescent Hill but Grandfather had insisted, and so we went. It took nearly an hour by carriage but we had a grand old time. Millicent Hedgegrove was with us. I knew that she had been sweet on Grandfather but never really wanted to admit it. Mother and Father took turns laughing at the antics of Celeste and I and fussing at us for being too silly.
The carriage could only take us so far and then we had to climb the half mile up...
I usually feel it when the leaves start to fall, when the sky drains of color, when the air grows chilly and listlessly stirs the dead leaves on the sidewalk. I can feel part of my brain start to shut down, as it has done year after year, about this time, when the leaves start to fall. They tell me it is chemical, but that can't explain the piercing of my heart, the emotional pain that causes me to shudder as fear and sadness begin to grow in my chest. And I can't stand to look another human in the...
100 feet away, and we still couldn't talk. She sat there behind bars on a rotting metal cot while I was wearing designer jeans with a designer purse, just to visit her in jail.
I stared at her through the glass, and she hung her head until the guard whispered to her that someone was there to see her. Slowly raising her head, she looked toward the plexi-glass visitors room; the room where we could watch the prisoners like they were in a zoo or something.
She looked up at me and gave a the smile you give that still...
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
The bully grabbed me and Billy by the collar. He started dragging us in the direction of what looked like a soccer goal, but had strange metal bars around it. It seemed as if there was already someone in there.
"Get in there, Squirts!" Chase growled. He kicked us in the goal like a soccer ball, except we didn't score him any points.
"So you're here too, I see. What did you do to him?" The strange girl said. "My name is Lara. I didn't give Chase my money when he asked. I should've just given it to him." She...
"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...
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,...
(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,...
"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...