Sandy was impressed. Her son, John, had never thrown a ball back like that before - so hard and fast that it bypassed her completely and flew over the wall at the bottom of the small garden they shared. "Nice one, Johnny!" she yelled. "Let me go and get it, I'll be right back!"
She yanked open the wooden gate recessed into the red brick wall and entered the narrow alleyway at the back of her house - and all the other houses like it. She looked left and right and spotted the ball rolling away from her, towards the...
I was stealthy. I knew my prey was crafty, so I prepared. Night vision goggles, sniper rifle, grenades just in case. I was stalking the elusive Reindeer through the forests of the Northwest.
Oh, but he was a crafty one, indeed.
He doubled back on me. I barely saw him coming. Who knew reindeers could fly? This one was wearing a blue cape, and its nose was glowing bright red.
I should have seen it coming. He ambushed me.
Then I saw the man himself. Santa. I thought he was made up. He'd been behind the ambush the entire time....
she didn't look at him. he had been absolutely horrid. he had simply taken off to the other corner of the world and hadn't even thought to come back and see her first. "Oh, darling. I missed you so much. Sweetheart - is something wrong?" "No - it's nothing." he begged her to tell him what wa wrong. she looked at him with her intense stare. "Why don't you guess? You can't just leave me like that! You said you loved me!" "I do love you.." "If that were true you would have come and seen me before leaving again....
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.
Surprisingly, I don't mind all that much. It's much calmer out here in the abyss. There's a strange peace that comes with being nothing. Or, rather, not being. There is a difference, you see.
Because I am not, I am able to not be wherever I like. And I am not in the middle of everything.
While I was alive, I loved stories. Stories were incredible things. I would look for them everywhere-- music, movies, books, newspapers,...
The year was 1986. She was five and happy. But she did not want to be six. There was something about six that scared her, put her on edge, made her think of grown up things like losing teeth and moving up to the next class with the mean teacher who didn’t allow her pupils to laugh during lessons.
So she came up with a plan to hide. She took her favourite toys (she was five, after all) and a little food and a carton of juice and crawled into the loft where no one ever went. There was nothing...
Long after the fireworks, Katie was returning form the lake side. It wasn't a long walk back to her home. She walk along the road. She was passing a house the paint a yellowed white, this was her boyfriend's house she stood there, and began to remember the the happy time she had with him, and as she remember all the good a phone rang, then the sound of a crying woman, she realized it was her voice.
My feet ached, but it was well worth it. I mean, how many times in your life do you have the opportunity to attend a championship? Sure, I had to park about three miles from the stadium. Sure, I somehow missed that city bus that was barreling directly toward me until it was too late. Sure, once the bus rolled over my feet, I experienced agony beyond anything I could have ever comprehended to that point. But we're talking CHAMPIONSHIP, man!
I had to drag myself the remaining half of a mile, crawl to the turnstile, beg to be admitted...
In hindsight, the solution was obvious. I'm not sure why I didn't see it at the time, but then again who does? I suppose that's why they say 'hindsight's always 20/20'. Perfect vision. I can't say that I've ever really had a knack for figuring things out on the spot, on the fly, with no real time to think about it. I'm a 'processer'. I like to process things, take my time, really think things through. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work to my advantage.
There are situations in life when you just have to come up with an answer, lightning...
How do you tell a child that it's over? How do you explain in short, fleeting moments that they have reached the end?
I was always so proud of this child. I hadn't known her for long, but when we found her, she was like a celestial reminder that good remained in the world and that we always have something to fight for. She brought us a reminder of innocence in our darkest and most twisted days, and for that I will forever be thankful.
I had loved watching her grow up. She would tell me tales of imaginary people...
"Will you just buy a newspaper?"
"I don't need a newspaper. I'm going to say 1985."
"No way, it can't be any later than 1973. Look at the can."
"I see the can, but -"
"Then you see the logo style. That's totally an early seventies steel can. Just buy a paper so we can figure out when we are."
"Look, the phone has a Southwestern Bell logo. That means it's AFTER the breakup of AT&T. Therefore, we are sometime in the mid-eighties."
"But soft drink companies had already switched to aluminum cans. How do you explain that?"
"I don't...