There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. What is he doing there? How did he get in here?! This is something I'd see in a movie and just be scared for the person sleeping in their bed. Now that person is me, awakened by the feeling that someone is watching me. You know the feeling? The one where you can just 'tell' that someone, somewhere, is looking at you?
That is what woke me from my slumber, as it were. Sleeping soundly, like any other night, I awoke disturbed. Sitting up in bed I wondered what was going...
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...
The water was clear and not a cloud was in the sky. Melody lay in the tall weeds near the lake under a weeping willow.
This was the last day of her summer vacation and as she was lounging there she was pondering all of the things she had done that summer and the things she wished she did.
She realized that only so much is possible in 104 days but that realization did not defer her mind from thinking of all her missed opportunities.
In reality isn't it strange that humans must choose what they want to use their...
Bess lock eyed Meg as their minds circled each other warily.
"if I were a cat I'd scratch you." she ventured.
"A dog, I'd bite you." Meg countered.
"As a bear I'd press you down…"
"A horse I'd kick…"
"If I was a buzzard I'd swoop with talons…"
"A Magpie, I'd mob you with heavy wings…"
"A hornet I'd sting…"
"A swallow, I'd flit and dart with sharpened beak…"
"And what would it get you, Old Meg?"
"Methinks the same as you,Young Bess. Naught but ill."
They stopped mentally pacing. A battle over that had never begun.
"What now then,...
Day 1750: It feels eerily similar to Day 1. I wake up with the sun beating down on my face, no longer held in check by the facade I'm sleeping against. The heat is starting to sting, which I contemplate for a few moments. I'm so glad to be feeling something upon my skin which isn't gravel or my own beard, curling back up to itch me in the very same spots where I'm sore. It's as if even my own face wants nothing more than to detach and fly away.
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
Half a life lived
within four walls
the once unthinkable
now familiar
with endless routine
a strange comfort
a life reset every day to run
the same sweep of hours
One small act
stealing from my future
thinking to be happy
now...then
realizing too late
the mistake
giving hostages
to my good behavior
Moments of quiet
hours of noise
time in the yard
never solitary
taking comfort
in the dark
giving in
the dark
Twenty years
one more small act
now here I am
standing
outside those walls
a life lived as half a whole
now to be lived
an...
The argument that had started before they left the house – before, even, they had learned that they would have to leave the house at all – continued as they drove. Jacob gripped the steering wheel with white knuckled hands, channelling his anger into the car instead of out at his wife, Barbara.
Barbara sat next to him, seething silently, her own hand wrapped together, her own knuckles just as white as her husband’s. One would soon break the deadlock, but neither wanted to be the first. The air was heavy with upset.
Jacob broke first. “You still not speaking...
"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...
"No, absolutely not!" Mama Tiger told her cub.
"But Moooooom! All the other cubs get to bring down a gazelle at my age!"
"I don't care what all the other cubs do. I'm not their mother; I'm yours. And the answer is no."
Timothy Tiger wandered off to sulk with his siblings, who were fighting over a piece of dark meat. Watching his brothers fight over a leg, he mumbled, "I bet your mother wasn't overprotective like mine."
He stopped and pondered this a moment. "Oh," he said in sudden realization, shrugged his shoulders and grabbed a leg bone from...