I watched as the creature - the whatever it was - floated on the soft breeze towards me. It had wings, but it didn't seem to want to use them, gliding through the air instead. As it got closer, my nerves started to act up.
I hate insects.
I hate anything with more than four legs and I'm not that keen on anything with more than two, if I'm honest about things.
I felt cheated as I watched it. The first sunny day in weeks, and I had a chance to enjoy it, sitting in the garden with a book...
They were listening to Bach while they sculpted windmills out of Play-doh. The Play-doh was blue. Aunt Gertrude would only allow blue Play-doh in the chalet. It had been that way since the accident.
Aunt Gertrude was 78 years old and she had no arms or legs. She had cut them off in 1983 as a display of devotion to Reggie, her pet octopus. Reggie could have cared less. I remember my Aunt as she wielded the chainsaw, slicing off her limbs, bathing everything in warm red gore. Reggie could care less. He just emitted some ink. Even when Aunt...
Vanquished.
Caroline let out a little giggle. Three years, seven months, nine days, twelve hours and twenty-something minutes ago she'd eaten her last piece of chocolate.
"I never thought I'd manage it," she said to Paul as she stirred her coffee. "I'd been addicted for...ooh...I'm twenty-seven now so....twenty-one years?" She sipped her coffee, her tongue shocked by the burning liquid as she took her first caffeine hit of the day.
"So how's your New Year's give-up-smoking kick going?"
Paul shrugged. "S'okay. I had my last ciggie with breakfast on Monday."
"But that's two whole days into the new year!" said...
It was late, one winter night. I was not accustomed to being awake at this hour. My car didn't handle the cold well, and neither did I. The AC had broken two hours into this odyssey. The frost crept in. I drove on.
My satnav, my electronic guide, my only companion on that awful night, took me down the country roads. I was not familiar with them. They were not familiar with me. I was not welcomed. They twisted and turned, disorienting me. I slowed down, taking a turn onto a particularly ice-covered road. My headlights flooded the path with...
The pistol was cocked... Ready to go. I didn't know what to do...
Should I shoot? Should I run? It was a question which required some thought. But I had no time to think.
I needed to think back to my college philosophy classes. Fight or flight. Talk or smoke.
So... I reached into my pocket slowly, all the while showing my pistol...
"Just let me show you my credentials"
hen I dropped my pistol. Then I ran.
It was a simple case of mistaken identity. That and trusting the good uniform while having no trust at all in the bad. Both of them are dangerous. But for Paul on this cloudy spring day it was a life changer.
"All I did was pick up an orange. What's wrong about that?" Paul asked the officer.
"Normally nothing. But this man here says he's seen you stealing fruit every day this week."
"That's crazy! I'm on work detail! Do you know how hard I had to work just to get this small amount of freedom? And now I'm getting...
It was the fall that surprised me the most.
I knew how it was supposed to feel. I'd been through it before. Gravity would pull me into the clutches of the wind as I silently watched you ascend the sky of my esteem, shining bright. I let everything rush by me. I knew that, though I was drawing warmth from you, you would be just as the sun, emitting light without focusing on me.
I'd been through it before. I thought I was supposed to cross my arms and let my head hang back as it consumed me.
But it...
"Look it's not that I don't like you, I really do. In fact, if your company was you, this deal wouldn't be an issue."
We had been discussing this for weeks, it was a deal to take in a growing company as our subsidiary. My company wanted them, as they were competition. They didn't want in, because they knew they were just that to us.
"Phil, I understand that my company has a tendency to say one thing and do another," I said to him, as he paced from his chair to the window behind it. "But we mean it,...
I had a dream the other night. We were sitting alone in our rooms, all of us, every single one, when suddenly —
The walls just fell away. There was no sound, no pyrotechnics; with a quiet resignation, all the matter in the world, except for our warm, breathing bodies, fell down into the void, leaving us floating purposelessly, naked.
And we all looked at each other, as the psychic frameworks that we etched into the streets, into our homes – our routines, our beaten paths, all the conventions that existed not in the world, but in the world as...
I'm with stupid. That's what his t-shirt says. the arrow points at me, because I always walk on his left. People read it and look at us and laugh. They don't know that he doesn't wear it for jokes and giggles. He means it. He always wears it when we go out together, which is only once a week. He allows me to do the weekly shopping with him. He makes the list but I have to carry it, because he always pushes the trolley.
Somewhere deep down I know he's a control freak and I should break away. Amy's...