She'd always come running when I called, my little sister.
She was three years younger than I was, but to her, I was big brother, father, and something close to God. I kept her and our little brother safe from our mother, I tutored her in math when she realized it wasn't her best subject, I bought them both little cupcakes for their birthdays when we all knew Mother couldn't be bothered with spending money on anything other than booze, and I'm the one who broke down and went to the principal for free lunches when they joined me in...
Looking out my thirteenth floor office window, I marveled at how dark, gritty and simply dirty the air looked. It was so hazy, it looked like dusk even though I knew it was only two pm. I decided to give my brief a break and go eat some lunch, this was the first time in four hours I had looked up, and I noticed the stiffness in my back, the hunger gnawing at me.
"God, look how dark it is! It's like we live in Gotham City!" I said to the secretary. She didn't grin, like I had expected.
"What?"...
The dapper man picked up a penny and found a little hole. The hole was smaller than the penny, but larger than a dime. The man, dapper and penny-wise, bent down on dapper knees, head bowed, right eye squinting into dime-sized hole.
"Dimes, dimes, dimes! Mole men flipping dimes, muddy mason jars tight with dimes!"
He wigle
I don't want to hurt you.
I want to hurt. At least then I'll feel something. I can't go back to being numb like that again. I felt so, so dead.
Does that mean you feel alive now?
Like you wouldn't believe. Just being with you wakes me up.
Oh, really?
Please don't leave me. I can't go back.
I can't stay.
If you leave, I'll die again!
Sometimes I am shocked at the state of America today. The young people just have not respect - no decency at all. They go around and do whatever they wish - guided, though, not by their wishes but by the pulsing masses. Every time that I see it I am disgusted. I see it and shrink. I don't understand it entirely. But this one thing is like my only weakness. Maybe I am like them. I just following a whim of someone else - or something. I'd like to think that I could have a justification for something that hits...
I know that if I keep going I will make it, just a few more yards surely. My body - weak, my mind - blank, my friends - gone. I lost them a few days ago in the stormy waters that came from beneath. Evidence from our fishing vacation that we had been anticipating for weeks, in smithereens. Why me, why am I the only one here.
Surely this has to be a sign from above, Gods way of letting me know I'm special and he has other things planned for me. I promise, I will not let him down,...
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...
While me and my friend were packing, I thought of what we will do during the holiday we have away from school or stress for that matter. I walked up to him with my luggage and grabbed his luggage. I rolled them all the way to the car. He soon joined me in getting everything else in the car. We started to drive soon and soon enough, we reached our destination. I got out of the car and walked to the front desk of the hotel. I grabbed the key card and walked back over to the car. I grabbed...
He had been happier when he was unhappy.
It was difficult to fully explain; his days of being an asocial shut-in were, upon reflection, paradoxically better than his life now. The words had flowed then, from his mind to his keyboard to the story, he could see and imagine vividly what he did not have.
Now, with a college degree, a good job, a new car, a girlfriend and a house in the hills, he was a markedly happier, and thus unhappier, man. He couldn't finish anything he set his mind to. His efforts were as half a page of...
What did it matter what he thought of her? She knew he couldn't ever really see into her.
"You want the veal," he said.
And he was right; as much as she didn't like it, he was right.
"You're wrong," she told him. She looked at the waiter. "I'll have the mixed greens with the balsamic on the side."
It was a kind of a sneer, a way to get back at him.
Simon carved out a bite-sized piece of meat and held it on his fork, reaching across the white linen tablecloth.
She opened her mouth, mesmerized by him,...