Her cheeks were as pink as her dress, blotched with red that matched the little bows that tightly held her blonde hair up in two ridiculous pony-tails that resembled palm trees. Her mother did the dog's hair like that as well. Jonathan always wondered how someone could want a second Maltese instead of a daughter.
Was he being unfair? Probably. It was something he slung at Marie as their last fight as a married couple wound down. That fight he'd carried on with such spirit convinced there would be break-up hate sex, but that shot at her parenting skills effectively...
he ran into the room, his heart pounding and his clothes soaking wet. yet it wasn't dripping water it was dripping blood. Revenge was all the man had told him before he pounded at him. Revenge for what? what have i ever done? he looked for his phone and once he saw it he heard a pounding on the door. the house shook whenever the man pounded the door."you killed her! you killed her!" i heard him screaming and that's when i heard the door burst open and i could hear his heavy feet climbing the stairs. i dialed for...
The ceremony was fine, stuffy and long but fine. The party had been alright, except that her father had booked a stuffy classical six piece when they really wanted to get a soul band.
But the father-in-law was paying so you could only say so much, and she never ever stood up to him anyway. So he had to spend five hours in a restrictive tuxedo, stealing glances at her as she danced with her father, with the best man, nodding and smiling as old ladies pulled at his arms so they could kiss his cheeks and congratulate him, telling...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. The doorway was not the kind of doorway best suited to huddling, and the gown appeared equally ill-designed for the purpose. Yet huddle she did. The rain dripped and sputtered from the sky, streaking her scarlet back as it fell.
After a time, she carefully unhuddled and picked up the bag that she had lain down beside her. She withdrew from it a small, glass orb, in which indistinct shapes and colours seemed to float. Lightning flashed briefly across the sky and as she held the...
Dancing dreams over streams of lightning. My brain is fried rice; your hands delightening. Totally cavernous, and almost incestuous; your wrists are bound by mustard eloquence. Queens beans scenes on stages; pages without wages, and slaves in conclaves. Your anus my innards, your penis, my skin hurts just thinking about your gym shoes on my lips; your sweaty cunt on my knee. You picked me up by my underwear and hung my on some trees. I spit on your lungs, my farts on your tongues. Some senses smell and some fences swell. Your ass hurts? My toes squirt. This is...
She screamed at me. I only rose my voice to make sure she heard me over her rant. She seemed to think that i was a wall that she could just yell at and i would'nt do anything. but she was wrong. i was wondering how our friendship got to this point. then, one day, it was my mother who gave me a revelation that clicked all the pieces together. the day we started getting choppy was also the day that 1) my newer, other friend stepped into our lives, and 2) she got chased up a tree by a...
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...
He was absent. Again. The kid would only show up on test days - on which he performed well enough. But that wasn't the point. All the other students showed up every day, and worked earnestly. And taught each other. And applied the concepts. He would pass the exams but forget all the material down the road. It would be like most of the bright students - playing with ideas. Treating it all as a show - as a game. Show up to perform. Wasting their talent. Lacking direction. Lacking any real purpose. Where was the kid going to get...
sitting on the I see my family crumbling before my eyes. I have achieved my goal, revenge for what they have done to me in my childhood. They took all my friends and everything I was passionate about all away from me, so now I am returning the favor. There they are, my parents kneeling down as they are being beaten to the ground and watching everything they love fade away. this is the way things work now. I am the dominant one and they will suffer at my feet. They have brought this on themselves and I will never...
"Dragonflies are good luck," his grandmother used to say. "They are fairies' horses. Their wings spread wishes and wonder."
He remembered that and not much else about her. They would sit in the grass by the shore of the lake. He used to spend three weeks every summer out at his grandparents house. They picked blueberries and chopped wood, made cookies and walked in the woods.
He was an adult now. They were long dead.
His daughter stood in front of him, frowning, hands onm hips. "That's not true, daddy. Dragonflies are dragonflies, not horses. And fairies don't exist."
He...