Even before the industrial collapse, animals regularly came across absurd remnants of the human race.
Always practical, birds, squirrels, insects, and less visible creatures maintained just enough curiosity to see if an object in their environment had any survival value. There were no monkeys or animals with playful dispositions around.
Plastic was generally left to photodegrade and slowly contaminate. Cloth was picked apart by birds and reformed into nesting. A small percentage of the eggs turned into malformed hatchlings, owing to the vinyl in the plastic.
Always practical, mother birds pushed the failures out to make space for the well-formed...
It was the fall that surprised me the most. The fact that it took so long that I could actually be afraid of the action of falling. The wind was stinging my face and making my eyes water, I was screaming but the noise of the explosion had taken out my hearing. The people strapped in around me were mere shadows, forms with fuzzy outlines and indiscernible features, mouths open in silent noise.
I forced my head back round, my throat filling with bile as the ground suddenly rushed up to meet us, my fingers twisting in the belt around...
La pirogue avait appartenue à son père. Il pêchait tous les matins. Chaque matin il tendait dans l'eau son bambou dans le calme du lac. Aucun bruit ne venait déranger son activité favorite, jusqu'au jour ou un ours l'appela depuis le rivage. L'ours voulait traverser la rivière et lui demandait combien cela pouvait bien coûter. Antinoma lui répondit qu'il lui en couterait 3 poissons. Il venait chaque matin et retournait bredouille vers sa case. L'ours saurait il lui apprendre à pêcher afin que son père du haut de son paradis puisse être fier de lui?
l'ours avait peur de l'eau....
My heart sank. The sound of a leaf crunched behind me. I turn my neck in fear. There I see it. My demise. Lurking in the shadows of Shayne Park. Drool bungee jumps out of its vicious mouth as it snarls at me. I feel its heat breathing in my heart. Piercing eyes stare into my soul freezing me in my tracks. The tan-skinned coyote puffed its chest and readied itself for attack. Suddenly I hear a loud bang, followed quickly by a squeal. I look behind me and see the coyote on the flor
If there was hope, it lay with the proles... or something like that. Winston, the character from that stupid book he'd been forced to read for English lit, had been whinging on about how the proles were stupid or something, but yet he seemed to find hope in their humanity. What? Why? His teacher would want him to expand on the concept, and he couldn't very well just copy the Cliff Notes word for word, nor admit that he'd simply read the synopsis. He called up Cara.
Her voice sounded sleepy on the phone. "Yeah? What do you want?"
"Why...
The sheep were at pasture.
It was 0300 and the troops were restless. They wanted action, not this placid chewing of grass. Every day was filled with nothing but chewing and the occasionally terrifying sheering.
The ones that came back from the shed came back wrong. Nude and shivering, wild looks in their eyes. Year after year. Jimmy couldn't take it anymore. When they came for him the last time, he ran for it. He chewed and bit and growled his sheep growl.
He didn't come back. That night they looked in when they saw the soft lights come on...
Bombs were the last thing on his mind. The first thing on his mind was an egg salad sandwich. Then bombs. He had exactly two things on his mind.
He was a very simple fellow, a bomb enthusiast who ate nothing but egg salad sandwiches. He didn't even have a proper name. Just He. Sometimes He answered to His or Him, depending on the tense.
There was a bomb in the bedroom and, being a bomb enthusiast, he was enthused by this. The only way to defuse the bomb was to eat the fuse. The fuse was not an egg...
They were listening.
She couldn't believe it. They were actually listening. She looked around the room at the audience. They had come here to listen to her and she had found the right tone, the rigth words and they were listening.
She took a deep breath and scanned her notes. She looked up again and focused on a man five rows back, in a heavy gray sweater.
After her presentation was over she sat down and tried to relax. There was one more presentation to be made and then the floor was opened for a short panel discussion. She looked...
Gigantic. Positively enormous. those were the words that first came to mind as she gazed up at the Statue of Liberty. She got into the helicopter and sighed as it shot upwards to the top of the enormous statue. her mind flicked back to Russia, looking up at The Motherland Calls. As she shrugged on her parachute and fixtured her helmet, she very simply jumped. she felt the wind ruffling her hair under the helmet and fusing her eyes shut. She pulled the cord, and drifted downwards, wondering whether she would hit pavement or water. She closed her eyes as...
…and at some moment you realize how wrong you were all that time. You don't need this anymore. Absurd. So annoying. You hear same phrases, stories, noises. And you cant do anything about it. You try to explain but what can you do when you are not used to explaining yourself. You have that stoned look on your face and not a thing can disturb you now. Because all you can hear are your thoughts. All you can feel is…and you make your first shot...
Same silence, the only difference is that you can actually hear that ear-breaking noise. Three...