The conversation lasted only two words, for the rest there was no need to speak, her reprochful glance told the rest of the story. My apologetic eyes. Her anger and humiliation.
Two words:
"I can't"
It had started six months ago at work, She was beautiful in an understated way. Graceful and classy, and increadably sexy.
It started with the eyes, the longing glances, long before any words were spoken. It ended here, in this hotel room.
After months of planning, trying to get a weekend away, the same time off work without arousing suspision, from either of our spouses....
My tiny, paper-thin dream floating on the darkness of my memories. That's all I could feel, all I could see, all I could hear, day in, day out. Taunting me. Tempting me.
If only I did. If only I didn't. I could be Somebody if I weren't so frightened of being Somebody.
Trapped in this limbo is a game for no man. The future is lovely and bright. It exposes me for what I am. The past is dream and lingering. It holds onto me with every tiny hook it owns, each day adding a new one.
To be free....
I sit high in the tree above the water. Watching. Bapa sits in his little green boat rocking gently in the water. The sight is a familiar one for me. I have been watching Bapa fish and gather since I could climb the tree. I close my eyes and listen. Bapa's voice floats through the warm sticky air and up to my perch in the tree. His voice is deep, warm, and smooth just like the water. when he is in his boat, I don't worry about him. Mama died when I was born and most of the time it...
He didn't think he was much of a cat person until he met Matilda. But DAMN could she cook. Now most people wouldn't eat a cat, but he was hungry. Starving actually. And he could eat about anything after hunting zombies. Cats couldn't turn into zombies for some weird biological reason. They were about all that were left. Them and rats, but who wants to eat a rat. Not Zeke the zombie killer.
Matilda was just happy to have some company. Company that wasn't trying to eat her.
They had stewwed kittens tonight. It was a special night. Zeke had...
It always did this. Time after time and time after time. Well, it was time. That was problem really. Dr Karz Flembold took his hand out of his pocket and poked it out of the temporal bubble; he saw a second immediately tick past on the clock face of his Casio.
He whipped his hand back in, feeling the sting of the present like a burn on the skin of his fingers. The watch immediately froze again. 15:04:21. It always was. But yet, he knew, time was still there. He had seen the world around him crumble and fall away,...
They were the best of friends, but the worst of enemies. My husband and his brother would become like tigers fighting for turf or for female companionship. And they would never stop. I liked it when we first met because, of course, my husband, then my roommate's friend, fought for the right to sit beside me at the dinner table, to talk to me, and would find all sorts of ways to stop his brother from any contact.
He didn't have to do that. I didn't like his brother much. They looked exactly alike, although there were 10 months between...
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...
In hindsight, the solution was obvious. I had gone through all the facts, interrogated every suspect, and analyzed all possible theories and evidence. I had them all assembled in the den of the immense estate. Lady Distala was a nervous wreck, nibbling her lovely filed nails and shivering slightly, though the room was warm. "I am aware that all of you know that a crime has been committed in this very home, a mere few hours past. Mr. Edward Leston was found murdered in the back garden at around two o'clock. I have asked all my questions of you, and...
The Bronx Zoo in my mind was empty. Maybe the gazelles were milling around Yankee Stadium, waiting for Catfish Hunter. The green grass of memory, my synapses folding in the sweeping July breeze, beheld the sweet roots of my birthday candles, climbing the kitchen air like lithesome monkeys, nimble as the imagination.
The elephant dragged its feet. Reen felt a little sorry for the great beast, obviously ready for a big meal and a nice nap after having carted the two of them around for the day. She hadn't raised a fuss at being led in circles for a half hour--but that was the last time he depended on Kai's sense of direction--and she did several neat tricks with her trunk on command regardless of the repetition--peanuts seemed to keep her happy then. But now the homestretch seemed just as long for her as it for them. The archduke pat at her...