There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. I have no idea who they are. I don't recognise the outline, the shape. I think the figure is a woman. She, if she is a she, is tall and slim, almost skeletal, like a witch. This thought scares me. I don't want to be visited by a witch, especially not the ghost of a dead witch. Which is worse? A live witch, with a wand and a broom? Or a ghost witch, with neither because she is no longer a physical substance? Would the live witch or the ghost witch...
Stinkbombs ruined my perfect wedding night. The odious smell wouldn't leave me, even after a few days. I knew it was a sign, one of many I had been getting ever since I announced my engagement. Today was our fourth day in the paradise resort high in the mountains and John hadn't returned from hiking with the local guide we'd hired.
Of course there was a reasonable explanation. Lost track of time, minor accident, losing something, getting engrossed in a special flower or bird. He was into nature my John. Tall, very slim with blond wavy hair, striking blue eyes...
Trivia. I always liked useless information. Like all the actors to have played Dr. Who (even though die hards will know the character was The Doctor), the names of the 7 dwarfs in the Grimm's fairy tale, and how many deadly sins there were. So, when I was asked (by the man himself, if man is the right word) "What is my name?" I knew what it wasn't. It wasn't Frankenstein. That was the name of his creator, but so many thought it the name of his monstrous offspring. Frankenstein's Monster was possibly the closest he'd ever come to an...
I'd paid for the whole night, thinking that I might as well go for the whole enchilada.
Half an hour would have been $80-plus, the "plus" being a sliding scale based on what I wanted to do in the half-hour. An hour would have been $200-plus. She said the full hour cost more than two half-hours because the clients usually wanted to be more exotic if they have a whole hour to work with.
I paid $2000-plus for her to stay with me the whole night. All the hours she'd do nothing but sleep with me, she could have been...
The day went well. Lots of talk about what we could've done and could've been. Smiles and twinkles led to hugs then kisses.
Memories were relived and sighs..."You know, you had me at Ox Bow Lake. I knew it had to be you. A little maturity in your face, the hair's a little shorter. But the lake's name made me really hear your voice, and that hadn't changed in 40 years."
I always wanted more than we had had...
Marvin's head jerked up from the desk when he heard that ring. It was an awful ring - one that he should have been used to, and probably would have been, under normal circumstances. But the reason why this ring was so horrendous and annoying was because Melinda accompanied it, with her terrible voice, saying "Marvin! Pick up the damn phone!"
Marvin wanted to go back to sleep, but he knew that he shouldn't have been sleeping in the first place. And that voice, "Marvin, Pick up the damn phone!"
The trouble, of course, was that the phone had been...
Whap! It him like a .... what? Whap! It did it again... that thing inside his head. He'd forgotten to take his meds... oh, many days gone by. The doctors had warned him when left the ward... Whap! It felt like... God, he couldn't have described it if he'd wanted to. He'd loved his mother.. when she was alive. Being dead didn't help his issues... his mother, not him, that is. The ward had been locked, the drugs forced on him.
Whap!
He'd promised the doctors he'd take them when he got out.
What!
He'd instead torn them up and...
"I'll be 69 this year."
I lifted my eyes from my book, struggling with my irritation. Across from me sat a woman, her eyes clouded with reflection as she stared over my shoulder. "Forty years I could have spent with someone who adored me if I hadn't have been so blind."
I blinked. I couldn't quite tell if she was actually speaking to me. I folded my book around my thumb and waited. The ache in her voice spoke to the same in mine and I refused to look at my phone that had hummed more than once, someone far...
Margaret talked trivia all day to me. Tv shows, online forum friends, recipes, to do lists, celebrity downfalls. Why would an ex-intelligence agent be like this? It was a mystery I wanted to solve.
Whenever I came over for a chat, we sat drinking coffee in a living room bursting with ornaments and pictures on the walls. I don't think there was an inch of space anywhere. Dreamcatchers, statues of the Virgin Mary, shelves of porcelain dolls, angels. I've never seen so many different types of angels in my life! Paintings of them, statues, crystal, hundreds of crochet angel pins...
Trivia. They say Native Americans, and other native people of the World, believed photographs stole their soul, the marrow of their being. It comes up a lot in clever White people films and books, when they want to show Savages and Locals as ignorant and superstitious.
Actually, it is probably more true of the early photographers themselves, breathing Mercury fumes, day in day out, in producing their metal plate dageurotypes. The toxin building up, destroying the marrow in their bones, until they quickly faded as much in Life and Strength as their pictures eventually did. Easy pickings they were.
I...