As I gazed across the lake at the empty gazebo, I realized I wanted to be there. To stand in the center, surrounded by it's beauty, it's superiority. I felt a strange pull, like I belonged there. "Come to me..." I paused, Morgan was calling me, it was time to join the rest of the class, but the gazebo... I wondered what was over there, and why it wanted me, just an American schoolgirl come to visit. Suddenly, I realized that the snake on roof was moving. "Come to me". I couldn't tell if the voice was in my head...
It wasn’t a specific look, or anything she said exactly. It was the things she didn’t do that gave it away. The way that she didn’t automatically include me in the conversation, the way she didn’t look to me when something funny happened, the way she didn’t move up to get more space but stayed, leg pressed against mine, reminding me that she was there.
All the instincts we’d developed about one another over the many years we had been friends were now kicking into gear and compensating for all the things we couldn’t say, not with all these people...
With a roar of displaced air and grinding gears, the blast shields protecting the gun emplacements retracted, and the defensive batteries opened fire. A river of hot lead and explosive ordnance spewed forth at the oncoming creature.
It barely stumbled. What didn't explode harmlessly against its armored carapace whistled by as its eldritch powers deflected the bulk of the barrages.
Attack helicoptors and missile-laden jets zoomed by, but they were mere gnats to the attacker. It lumbered ever closer to the fortress.
General Davis grimaced as a swipe of its claws downed an entire Blackhawk squadron. It wouldn't be long...
Last night was so alive so alive she got locked on the rooftop of her own party. Everyone was down stairs having a great time while she and joe were stuck on the roof. Joe is her ex ahes been avoiding for sometime now. The last time they saw each other was at the bonfire. The town she once lived in she escaped at 17. She left with Evan her best friend at the time before he exposed her very big secret to everyone. They had been up on the roof silent for atleast 20 minutes. Time passes as she...
Ridiculous. Absurd. Absolutely and beyond all normal standards of decency, indecent. That was how I looked in the mirror the morning that I discovered my first gray hair. Or was it my third. I was faced with the overwhelming reality of a head of lustrous, youth-infused auburnness marred by the upright and wiry soldier who insisted on taking up some precious real estate in my brain that could have been much better utilized by a sudoku puzzle or a cure for cancer. How were things now to possibly proceed in a direction other than graveward? What was the sense in...
Cafes were a good enough way to pass the time. Human drama unfolding outside the window, watching everybody pass by, living out their lives, lost in themselves, acting as though they were unobserved. They gave away clues, hints, promises - she could learn enough about them to become them in the time it took her coffee to cool.
Or perhaps she created them, watching them pass by - that man there, he was meeting his lover, the new young man in his office. His brother (he lived with his brother, and a dog) didn't know, and he was terrified that...
The sistine chapel didn't look quite right. From the ground of the chapel, it seemed very tiny. Almost insignificant. He tried to appreciate the art hovering above him as the tides of tourists pushed him out of the way, the tour guides spoke loudly about Saint so and so, and the priests shushed the crowds. It was all overwhelming so Jim left with a feeling of disappointment.
When he finally emerged from the museum, he looked around the streets. He could walk around to St. Peters Cathedral but he knew it also would be overrun with loud tourists. He couldn't...
She was confused. Usually there was a title, a prompt, a line, a place to start from. Today it simply said "Write as you please, in six minutes, like a breeze".
Breeze, now there's a word she was familiar with. There was always a breeze, always a cruel wind. It hunched her shoulders and tightened her neck and made it a necessity to always be wound around in a scarf, tightly constricted.
Breeze is a soft sounding word, reminiscent of the ocean, the sea, sail boats and people swimming. It makes one think of a Coastal town, of Europe, of...
We stood on the sidewalk, our sodas sweating onto our hands. My fingers were so slick I thought any second now the plastic cup would slip through them and smash into the floor. I adjusted my grip, and you smiled slyly.
"Do you want to come in?" You asked, gesturing at your house, behind us. One lone light lit the front yard. I looked at it for a second, judging whether it would be a stupid idea. Results: Extremely stupid.
"Yeah, sure. Why not?" Everyone knows the best adventure stories begin with "Why not?" and the worst romances start with...
They were listening.
That simple realisation caught her offguard, her breath temporarily stuck in her throat and she felt, just for a moment, her strength falter.
But the feeling passed quickly because of course they were listening, they were her friends, they had held her up when she was too drunk to walk in a straight line, pushed her hair back from her forehead when she cried and hugged her with glee everytime that they saw her. They loved her, of course they were there, listening as she conquered her fear of singing in public.
It wasn't that they had...