A steady rain poured outside to her left. On her right, the family had gathered for a special dinner. They sat quietly, watching the girl make the biggest decision of her life. Would she stay with them and eat, or run headlong into the wet streets of the city?
She had one reason to remain, and one reason to leave.
Both compelled her greatly.
Her father had been sick for a year. This dinner was to celebrate his good health. He always called her his little red devil, for she was mischievous and always wore something red, every day.
She...
We were out of gin. The night was off to a great start. How was I suppose to get blackout drunk within an hour. I had a case of beer but none were cold. I left the apartment and walked over to the liquor store. I'd eventually get there and then I'd return and get drunk.
Why the hell was it all the way down the block. Not to complain, but that was actually great. It kind of was a problem when week after week the same routine went down.
"If you just waited, we could've went to a bar"...
He hung his shirt up on the clothesline before he left. He told me he was going fishing, and I said okay, and gave a bucket with sandwiches wrapped in gingham cloth, and lemonade in a mason jar, and even two chocolate chip cookies. He had the bucket and his pole,and I saw him meet our neighbor down the road, watched them shake hands.
And then I went inside, and knitted another pair of baby booties, and refolded the stacks of little clothes in the dresser. Any day now.
But our neighbor came back later that day alone, and distraught....
Potatoes.
That's all the six year old girl would eat. And it seemed that no matter what else I tried to serve her, potatoes was it. She wouldn't try anything else. Wouldn't look at anything else. All she ever wanted? Potatoes.
"Honey, what are we supposed to do?" I sighed, sliding into bed that night. "We went out to the Olive Garden. And she asked for potatoes!"
My husband chuckled a little. "Well, look on the bright side: at least it's a vegetable she wants. Could be worse."
"This is bad enough! No protein! No grain! Heck, even sugar would...
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...
"You don't like her, do you?"
"I don't have to."
He glanced at her, although kept his eyes on the road. "You have to try."
"Really, my feelings towards her don't matter, what matters is that you like her, and she likes you." Her feathers were ruffled now as she looked out of the window, most decidedly not at him. "Besides. I am trying."
"Then maybe you should try harder."
They didn't speak, the sounds of the engine the only thing keeping them from awkward silence.
"The others all like her."
"I don't have to like everyone - "
"You...
Taste was one of those things that was meant to be very personal, and yet everyone seemed to recognise bad taste.
The joke may have been ill-timed, but she maintained that it wasn't in "bad taste" - soon finding herself in the minority (one, in fact).
Fine. Fine, fine, fine - he would've laughed, if he'd been there. Then again, him not being there was the entire point.
He would've laughed at that, too.
It was a nice, warm day, and that was ridiculous - funerals were meant to be full of rain and the dark and thunder and the...
He hated the color green, he hated it with all the enamel in his big front teeth. Since he was a tiny woodchuck he was teased mercilessly by his peers because well, he wasn't colorblind like all the rest. He could see the color green...everywhere, everywhere! The anger grew within him against this gift that he called a curse. He just wanted to be like all the other woodchucks living in their happy, ignorant, colorless little worlds. He could never sleep during the day with visions of sugar green fairies dancing in his head. He began taking walks, destroying all...
She didn't look at him. She couldn't. If she even thought of him she could feel the tears welling upp and her throught constrict. How could he be so cold, so uncaring. She took a deep breath and tried to get a hold of her self. Feel nothing she intoned, feel empty. The hardest part was getting into bed at night. Laying down next to him and pretending that he wasn't there. He talked to her about nothing and she responded as evenly as she could manage, still without looking at him. SHe could feel his frustration, hurt and anger...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. He looks like a nice enough fellow, but the last time I saw a stranger in that general location, I was dragged through the back of my closet into a magical world where the whimsy was spread so thick, I developed psychic diabetes.
This time, my uninvited guest seems to be wearing one of those hard hats with the drink holders on either side, and the tube that mixes the two. It has a logo on it, but I can't quite make it out. The room is too dark.
The figure...