One day a man called Gilbert played with small electrical appliances, he named this activity "duckery". He played so much his fingers became paranoid. This paranoia soon ran from his fingertips straight to his heart. After a couple of weeks he noticed a strange, yet, comfortable feeling in his upper right shoulder, he called this "proper". Proper became so "happening" that he made up words like "happening" and "bloodthirsty". But things started to take it's toll on poor old Gilbert. He lost his confidence in playing with small electrical appliances. He became depressed and fell in a coma, he named...
Hush the forest. Hush where the bear was, the deer have been downed. Hush my screaming heart.
In the kitchen where I am carried after my father's death, I ask for one shortbread cookie filled with jam as my mother Connie smiles around like the carousel she is of feelings. I want to sit in the dark corner and think about the bear mauling him. My father Claus, lying on the needles and still.
I ran into the woods and Meryl knocked me out. Unintentionally, I was fighting him as I would a bear. He cried onto my suede, he...
"Which way to Omaha?"
Paint flakes blew in the wind. It smelled like gas. Anna's hair was matted; she could feel it knot further. She had nothing; the pockets of her pants were empty except for lint and paint flakes. And one quarter.
The men here knew nothing except that a woman, however unattractive and hagard, was standing in front of them. Who cared where Omaha was, anyways?
"You want some money, sweetie?" One of them whistled. "Ain't no one givin' you money in Omaha."
She rolls her eyes and walks away. Dust settles in the space above her clavicle....
Peasants. That's what he called them. To their faces. Idiots. Perverts.
The fact they were his employers didn't seem to matter at that very moment. They sacked him and it wasn't until he was standing in the street in the pouring rain that he wondered what on earth had happened.
One moment he was being congratulated for achieving the top sales rank that month, next he was shoved out the back door clutching his P45.
As he looked through the window, he could see Riley, smirking. Something was odd about this as Riley was his best friend.
Back in the...
"Send it back," he said, his mouth shaped like a cruel stink.
"Why, whatsa matter with it?" I laughed.
"It's not a twist, that's a wedge. I didn't ask for a goddamn wedge. This is not an ice tea."
The busboy removed the drink, soon replacing it with another.
"Are you goddamn kidding me? This is the same thing. Do you know what a twist is?"
"Yeah," said the busboy, "it's what my fate has suddenly taken."
And he drank it down. Wedge and all.
My word muscles are stiff. My writing bones ache. The prose reads like a bruise.
I burst bored air through my lips, upsetting the dust on my keyboard.
I see a tangerine, withered in the shadow of an orange, withering; dust on the hand sanitizer; a rubber band ball in a novelty stein; an orgy of paper clips; surrounded by colors, none too vivid, the only highlights are the highlighters.
The building I thought they were slowly constructing around me is being stripped as bare as a gazelle felled by a lion, shred by hyenas, cleaned by maggots.
I wasn't...
He does not even see him. My goodness, quit taking pictures of me and turn around you moron. The hyena is laying low to the ground, covered by the brush, unless you look at him head on.
The hyena is inching closer to the human, who of course, is facing me. I need to get over there quickly.
My back condenses, and loads like a spring. SNAP. I am the fastest land animal. I should be able to get there in time.
I am off, and this feeling never gets old. The brush is tall, but not tall enough to...
"You know why girls suddenly change their hairstyles don't you?" He leered over my sister with that gap-toothed smug-motherfucker grin. "Girls change their hair every time they make a major change in life. Like pigtails right before or right after a break-up. Females actually believe this changes them as a person."
My sister giggled, which is my favorite part, right before she undid the top two buttons on her blouse, which is my least favorite part. "You're so right," she said. She kissed him, hard, right before she saw me peeking under the door.
She scowled at me, but she...
As she sat she thought and thought quick furtive thoughts.... of how how how and when could she move away from that place, move across the narrow streets of the city, and out into the fields of the countryside. It was too dark to see, but important to leave before dawn. Red that recedes like a shade in the dark, shouts in the daytime. She ought to have worn brown, her vanity tripping her up again. Her hands clasped the small bag of pearls, the only money she can bring back with her, the only reward for these weeks of...
The Wallaby jumped over the fossilized tyrannosaurus rex exhibit of the Natural History Museum and landed in a dramatic three-point stance in front of his arch-nemesis, Baron Mind. It was time to end this heist.
Baron Mind stood tall, clutching the fabled Carter Diamond in his purple-gloved hand and cackled furiously at the hero before him. It was hard not to laugh at a grown man wearing a kangaroo costume.
"Baron Mind," The Wallaby said in his thick, electronically enhanced Australian accent.
"Bear what in mind?" Baron Mind replied, and broke out into another hysterical laugh.
"Very funny, Baron," the...