One day, in the morning, not the afternoon, I was eating cheese. When I finished my block of cheese I noticed that there was an interesting amount of wind outside and I thought to myself, "Self, let us harness this power." So as I wrote down my many ideas of how to harness the power, one sprang out off of the paper and said "Use me!". It was my idea to harness wind with wind. I decided to blow up 6 balloons, 3 pink, 3 purple. I would travel the world, literally wherever the wind took me, because, if you...
To keep her kids from starving, Mama mouse bravely went into the large house. The mouse hole they lived in was just fine, but the owner of the large house, well he was a villain in their eyes.
Mama mouse looked left and right before scurrying under the kitchen cabinet. She couldn't let anyone see her or else who would take care of her darling children? She peeked out from under the cabinet. Good, no one was coming. She cautiously walked out and looked up. There it was. Her goal. Upon the table sat a beautiful roast turkey. She was...
The air raid sirens were going off. I could tell. Even from the thousands of feet above, I could hear the wailing of the sirens call. And that was fine. Most of the people below us would be dead by morning anyway. The tell tale rumble of the US sky-boats shook the fuselage of the Junker we were in, signalling our commanding officer to greenlight our jump. In the dwindling light of evening we leaped from our Ju-88, nicknamed Hati, and plummeted towards the blooming flowers below.
Allied parachutes blew up below us as we rocketed towards the earth. I...
Wow. The Statue of Liberty. I've lived in New York my whole life, and have personally seen it one time, and it's on my I heart NY credit card, of course. I played the Statue of Liberty once in a 5th grade play about America. I was "Miss Libby" and I sang about inflation. "The Red White and Blues" my song was called. I was 11. I wasn't a very great singer, but my teacher had great faith in me, as did my mother. There's a VHS tape of it somewhere, I do know that. Only once, though, have I...
She listened, intently. The night was quiet, and she might be alone. Then again, she might not. The girl in the red gown wished she were somewhere other than Beijing, huddled in a doorway in the night. But where would she be, if she could choose? Back in England, probably. There, she would be fearless. There, dangerous men would not be chasing her across the city, seeking to recover an ancient idol - really, it was an ugly thing, wooden and splintery. She wished she knew what all the fuss was about. James had wanted it, though, and so she'd...
"The McDonald's Arch Deluxe. Thee layers of disgusting terror."
The ad flashed by on the R31 bus, and I quickly completed it in my mind. Damn those people. As a vegan, I feel these ad execs should not be allowed to penetrate my air space.
Before I was strong-willed, such an attempt used to stand a chance at luring me from my modest, then-vegetarian diet.
Now, it had the chance of an earthworm in a swimming pool.
At loss of time and options, and very hungry for no apparent reason, however, I stepped into a nearby Burger King and ordered...
Waves. Waves lapping at the scarred coast line, the sound of gulls cooing above, the smell of the salty seawater.
The therapist had told her to imagine her happy place, every time she felt a panic attack coming on. Every time she felt stressed, which she was prone to, she came back here.
Her happy place.
She was nine years old, her strawberry blonde hair in pigtails, her jade green coat pulled tight to keep out the bitter wind. Balancing atop a weather warn log, she had pretended she was walking the tightrope at the circus.
She had always dreamt...
"So are you going to Joanie's?"
...
"Why not? It's not like she is a bitch or anything."
...
"She didn't... She didn't! Oh that was low."
...
...
...
"All that?"
...
"Now you are pulling my leg, I knew Joanie like football, but what a way to show it. But you know we should go."
...
"Why? I can't believe you just asked that. Why? Because her parents left her to watch their home, you know that seventeen bedroom house on the hill. She wants a few people over."
...
"I don't know, fifty or seventy."
...
"Oh...
The plough boy Tom burned a different colour; a mix of jealous green and blue regret. Typical of a young man, losing his purse in an unfair wager.
The witch could see two snakes writhing in the boy's head. Still, to his credit, he kept his tongue when ill placed words would have caused much harm to all present. If he could weather the coming storm, he would have grown into his boots, as Meg's mother would have said.
Each person crushed into Meg's cot had their own story to tell. Maybe his was hasty revenge and slower repentance. Either...
As the Sun rose from His slumber,
She began to stir
in her little house of wood,
a coffin just for her.
Each day,
she hears them scrape
away the earth with shovels,
waiting until
finally
her final bed is done
forever for her to lay.
In the morning,
she awakes,
dead to others
yet alive in her dreams,
to the sound of falling stones
as they cover her coffin.
And, as the final stone fell,
she said a silent prayer, asking for
sweet dreams for her to keep.
And as the earth lay there,
the mound dug in the...