Christmas parties at work. Always held during the day. I lift my head from my desk, shuffle to the lunch room, punch out.
No booze, no music. A potluck. This close to Thanksgiving in a soup kitchen. The owner of the company is a well-known philanthropist and a lesser-known miser.
The meal's adequate. Warm soda floating in the ice of a wet cooler. Outside, the rain falls. The ground's as soggy as the bread slices set beside the ranch dressing.
Merry Christmas. Back to work. I see Caesar in the hall and thank him for his salad.
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...
The Moon would never be the same again. Not after the Settlers came. See, we had claimed the Moon. Put our USA flag on it with our pretentious little stars. We thought that we'd always be revered as 'the people who claimed the Moon'. But that was before the Settlers came. They came like a swarm, hundreds upon hundreds of spacecraft. They had their big laser guns, and they trooped all over the Moon. And found nothing. No one lived on the Moon. But we were watching. Researchers looked on in wonder as the Settlers claimed the Moon. They set...
"This is your fault," his wife said to him. If you would just put your mother in her place I wouldn't have to and we wouldn't be fighting right now.
He replied loudly, "My fault? How is it my fault she's nosy? She doesn't mean anything by it anyway. You don't have to be such a bitch about every little thing."
"Oh. My. God. Seriously?" She was on a roll now. "It's your fault she's so nosy because you never say anything at all to her when she crosses a line. And once again, I wouldn't have to be such...
Not that he could fell it, but judging from the way he staggered with every few steps, his legs hadn't healed completely. It was likely he was setting himself up to trip and collapse again, unable to move, but he knew he couldn't stay any longer. He tried to make his steps as steady as possible, but with no percerption of how much weight he was applying, he was at a loss to gauge if he was accomplishing much, and in the back of his mind simply waited for the tell-tale crack of bones re-fracturing, and plummet into the grass....
No swimmers.
No DNA-laden tadpoles.
No way that the child was mine.
If you asked me 10-years ago if I could ever imagine myself sitting in a doctor's office waiting for my sperm count to arrive, I would have told you to fuck off. Or maybe piss off, since I hadn't lived enough life 10-years ago to cuss appropriately.
Yet, here I was. My soon to be ex-wife was pregnant. She didn't know if was my child or the child of the irish man she ran off with 2-months prior. Apparently, that surgery I survived only guarantees 99.995% success. But...
I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead.
It occurred a while back, and while I was living, I thought it was pretty unfair. Most people get 60, 70 years of life. Enough people got 30 or 40 years of life.
I got 25. By the time you're 25, you're only finally getting your last degree, your first bit of experience, stepping over that last big stone in your path before you enter the real world. The one where you earn enough money to do...
I am in love with a robot.
That's quite simply the only way to describe it.
Because although the robot wears His clothes, and says what He would say, I never actually see Him.
I never hear His voice, I don't get to look into His eyes, it has been so long since I felt the touch of His hands...
Therefore, the only way that I can describe my relationship with him, is that I am in love with a robot. Or more accurately, my mobile phone. Because my phone offers me the comfort of His words when I can't...
The present is moving too fast for the future, and I am deathly afraid of not feeling this world. But it is not time that is our enemy, but our minds that hold it. Oh to be the turritopsis nutricula, the everlasting jellyfish, invading our planet as we speak. Ever fecund, ever flashing, forward and backwards, too beautiful for time.
It was the fall that surprised me the most. Not a quick dip and it's over-No, it was a slow, painful, frightening decline. Every little glance, every whisper, her giggle which carries across the room, would have me slipping deeper and deeper into this hopelessly unrequited attraction. My ordinarily suave nature just dissipates when she appears, and I turn into this bumbling old goon. It's awful. And it's still happening. As we speak, my heart flutters at the thought of her, and I feel my hold on things tanlgiloosen. I am falling. And there is no escape. I only hope...