I knew that my outfit was risky, the plunging black bra exposing large breasts and cleavage. White sheer dress with black embroidery. The patterned hat, sharp, long painted fingernails and matching blood red lipstick may have looked good in a lounge bar but my fiance's grandmother was not impressed. Her husband was though. He couldn't keep his eyes off my chest and received a withering glance from his wife and got told to make the drinks in another room.
I never guessed that Bob's family were so rich. The white remote gates gave it away. I imagined they would live...
Leonard stumbled back. He almost fell. His heart raced and sweat stuck his shirt to his belly and back and armpits. He'd had patients worse off than Bea, patients with bloody ends, with pointless existances, tortured creatures that lived and died hooked to electricity and strapped to beds. None with the relative safety and comforts that he'd been treating Bea in, the comfort of home.
This was a scheduled meeting in the garden, she'd come from the trees, barefoot, bare arms, makeup garishly applied and with the gauzy veil over her face. His boy would laugh, he imagined, would point...
Portraits. Hanging in the gallery; all her own work. Self-portraits, and ones of famous people, she had finally found her passion.
Buyers, on-lookers, and art collectors alike all came to marvel at the paintings. The gallery was on Main Street in the City. Nashville had always been her home, and her dream to have her portraits on display for the Country Music Capital dwellers.
Her favorite portrait was one she had painted of her and her brother Damien. This one in particular, Leila was sitting on Damien's lap, looking up at him while their cat, Josephine was sitting at her...
In 1921, he flew from the Great Rift Valley, along the trails left by the ancient Martians, to find the Temple of the Sun. It was buried, like so much else on Mars, in red sands over the course of millennia, but that meant nothing when you had a native to escort you to their ancestral home.
"So, how can we breathe here?" Pete asked the small, silver creature before him.
It sat in the biplane, strapped in, looking ridiculously small in the pilot's seat. "Air bubble," it replied, fiddling with the dials.
Pete had never flown in a biplane...
Until now, she'd never thought of herself as pretty. She'd always known she was a woman, but pretty was a word that had never crossed her mind.
Shortly after she had reached the level of confidence where she didn't have to be paranoid about a little bit of stubble showing, or somebody noticing her hips weren't quite the right shape -- she suddenly became a little more confident.
All it took was sitting down in her favorite coffee shop with a smile on her face. That was it. That was when she met Sam. Her heart started pounding when he...
Nightmare. The officers had never seen anything like it. Rushing from the house they vomited not caring who could see. Ryan, only a week on the job, knew this career choice was over.
Nightmare. Samantha Walters did not know where to begin. As a psychic employed secretly by the force, she volunteered her services for his job even though the circumstances were the most horrific she had ever heard about. She did not last the day.
Nightmare. The neighbours all decided to sell up.
Nightmare. The police chief discussing the case had a nervous breakdown.
Nightmare. The photo journalists first...
The voiceless aberration toiled within his thoughts. Where was he? What purpose? Why? The words seemed to jumble within his mind as he gazed out of the tank his eyes out upon people that seemed blurred. He could hear them speak but could not understand as a young girl walked towards the tank her small frilled white gown running to the marble floor. She seemed to smile at the aberration and lifted her small hand up to the glass and smiled even wider seeing it turn to face her. "Da what is that?" The young girl asked innocently staring at...
Shape. Whatever that means. Forms. You can study the symmetry of symbols we use in written language, words. Formless, shadows, we count them, bend our fingers around, call them dragons, call them dreams. Non-euclidean. Shapes that can't exist. Memories, shapes our minds have been forced to hold. Thoughts, shapes our minds create to deal with hope and fear, which... which perhaps I have a difficult time distinguishing between. Angular, curvature, some caricature of what I thought I'd be at 24. 24. Two shapes, angular and curvaceous.
When we reached the top, we were so dizzy from the thin air we'd forgotten why we had to climb and headed back down the mountain.
At the bottom, clear-headed, we remembered why we had to climb and headed back up the mountain.
This continued for the rest of our lives.
"What's the worst thing you ever done in a Church, Sunshine?"
I looked at Beloved, I shrugged, although goosepimples and ice water prickled my body. "I killed a pigeon once."
"What?" Beloved laughed, his mouth pulled, his cheeks puffed and he pinched one lens of his glasses, pulling them up his face. "You're kidding."
"Nope," I said and I walked away from him, my arms clasped behind my back and I looked back and forth, up and down, and touched the smooth paint of the white-washed pews. "I killed it dead."
"WHY?" Beloved was still smiling, I did not have...