She loved that old house. It used to be one of the very first churches built in the tiny town that had disappeared around it. Then it went up for sale and the woman had jumped at the chance to buy it. The renovation was long and expensive but as she stood inside the finally finished building she thought that just maybe it was here little slice of heaven on Earth.
Smiling, she let the vaulted front door close behind her and turned to move to the brand new staircase that lead from the entry foyer towards the upstairs. Putting...
"What's the worst thing you ever done in a Church, Sunshine?"
I looked at Beloved, I shrugged, although goosepimples and ice water prickled my body. "I killed a pigeon once."
"What?" Beloved laughed, his mouth pulled, his cheeks puffed and he pinched one lens of his glasses, pulling them up his face. "You're kidding."
"Nope," I said and I walked away from him, my arms clasped behind my back and I looked back and forth, up and down, and touched the smooth paint of the white-washed pews. "I killed it dead."
"WHY?" Beloved was still smiling, I did not have...
The argument over the preferred pronunciation of "Pax Romana" bloomed into a bloody fistfight, not that it was terrifically violent so much as the pugilists were notorious bleeders. The patch of snow on which they sparred began to resemble the flag of Japan as arms unfurled, elbows snapped back, and fists clenched so tight, thumbs overlapped knuckles.
Inside, my kung pow shrimp cooled under the air vent.
Giving in wasn't an option anymore because I had given in too many times before.
I'd taken it time after time - too many times before, and this has me broken. I'm broken, broken from you.
You've simply abused me, in the finer way. The finer way where not all the cracks show, in the way that I can hold them in so that they are only something I know. In the way that only I will know when I see you again, and the cracks come stabbing on like a nightmare.
Now when you're feeling down, I won't risk...
"Of course, no one can make a unicorn," Pareth said, in that tone of voice he used when lecturing his students, "but you can take one apart." He stood, and I groaned inwardly.
He took the lecturing posture. "Of course, early giants of the field certainly tried. They glued the horn of a rhino to a horse, as if the mere simulacra of the thing could summon the real thing. Superstitious nonsense.
"Others tried grafting, and in more recent years we have seen specialized breeding, and even genetic manipulation. All abject failures. One cannot make a unicorn."
He smiled. "At...
Lorenzo hated the king. That's because the king liked donuts. All he did was eat donuts. Here is what the king said every morning when he woke up: "DONUTS! BRING ME DONUTS!" If you ate a donut, the king would kill you. All donuts were to be consumed only by him.
Because he ate nothing but donuts, he was very fat. He weighed 1600 pounds. He was heavier than the thrown he sat on, which was made of solid gold. He could not get up so the engineers turned his thrown into a makeshift toilet. That way he could consume...
You gave me the best summer of my life. The summer before I went to college, I wished that everything we had shared would never change.
We kissed on the bench in my backyard, in your car in the rain, at the movies...Then once I got to college, it was your apartment.
Back to summer; I can't think of better moments I could have shared with anyone else.
After my sophomore year, I didn't see you again. And I'll always think of the night you proposed, watching MTV, high, at 4am.
I will remember the way you used to look...
You can count me out.
That was what he had said as he had stormed off.
It wasn't as though the plan had been so ridiculous. It would just have been time consuming and time was the one thing he did not have in abundace.
He still had to write his paper, read five chapters worth of background material, prepare his meal chart for the week and continue training for the marathon.
No, he did certainly did not have time to mess around by climbing flagpoles and pulling practical jokes.
Just like he hadn't had time to go out with...
He let Sai take him anywhere. Because that's what near-siblings with the official title of co-workers did. Take each other places. Lunch, most frequently, when they were the only two at the headquarters. The two speed demons made quick work of any trip, surmounted the worst of downtown Tokyo's traffic--legality of driving up the sides of buildings could be called into question, but that was only natural to them--parked and dismounted behemoth motorcycles in Gothic Lolita and gloomy Visual Kei as if they'd just strolled through a park. Naturally, when visiting the monuments, like the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building, they...
We come from beyond the stars. We are the Yorkie chocolate bars.
I was in Grade 4 and this giant living chocolate bar was walking around the schoolyard. We tried shooting it and pelting it with rocks. But nothing worked. The chocolate bar was too thick.
"YORKIE!" it screamed and then it tickled me. Or gave me a wedgie.
Man, I hated that thing. But I have to confess that in a weird way, I liked it too. Don't ask me why but for some reason, I sensed that it wasn't completely malevolent. No. Deep down, I knew there was...