There was blood on my pillow.
My nose was dry. I hadn't bit my cheek. I hadn't somehow lost a tooth. A quick examination of my skull told me that it remained intact.
Oh, duh, I have DNA-Vision. I forget sometimes.
I scanned the blood on my pillow. It wasn't mine.
So where had it come from?
"Ah ha! It was me!" yelled someone from the foot of my bed.
It was my arch-nemesis, The Hemophiliac. Of course!
"What have you done?!" I roared.
"I snuck into your bedroom last night and bled on your pillow! But don't worry; I...
It was like one of those stop-motion films. Or maybe it was more like that handful of pictures his mom brought out when she was drinking. Dealing out snapshots of her life as if she had a chance at a full-house when the rest of them had just folded and walked away. The one dimensional images coming faster and faster.
He remembered the phone call, running out of the apartment without a jacket, the feeling of panic. Had he even closed the door? The car, his wife waving at him from across the busy street. No, that was wrong. That...
"You toddled around your aunt's spacious yard in your pastel dress with lacy white ruffles, matching bloomers showing beneath. When you found one egg, you carried it so carefully. When you found another, you gently picked it up, and held an egg cupped in each tiny palm, then smashed them together." My grandfather chuckled as he looked at the picture of me hunting Easter eggs on Aunt Lois' farm. He loved to tell that story, and loved to see the adoration for me that shined in his eyes as did told it. I miss him.
2070.
Dadi saes the Fires arnt the saem az wen HE wus a boy, wen the Nasties furst desided that storis cud be bad fur us. It wus bak then wen they also saed jewels wer bad. I can't se wy tho, az ther all shiny and glittry, but Dadi saes the jewels wer to blam for al the money bein taken from the pore and stuf. Maybe its becos jewels ar wurth so much.
Aniwai, this buk burning isnt az big as wen Dadi was iung, befor he gru up and becam a Nasty himself. Now Dadi finds buks...
Sal knew it was too late the minute the whistle blew. That train had been keeping time in Millersville for twenty years and when its screech filled the air, everyone knew it was one in the afternoon. An eclipse could turn the day to night and no one would doubt it was in the PM if the train sounded. Heart racing and pulse pounding, Sal made a desperate dash down the road, passing the stable and skidding to a halt. "Now there's an idea." If some idiot wanted to leave a saddled horse loosely tied to this hitching post just...
Running from the swarm of bees, Roger kept his eyes firmly ahead knowing he'd be able to jump into the river, swim underwater, get away.
Later that day, sipping Earl Grey tea, spreading deep red strawberry jam onto his wife's freshly baked scones, he couldn't believe he'd just survived such an ordeal. The yeasty aroma from bread in the oven, strong coffee and the whiff of the floor polish made everything so damn ordinary and routine, yet he could have been sipping hospital tea through a straw, face wrapped in bandages.
It wasn't the best idea to disturb the hive...
She'd always come running when I called. I forgot myself at one point, and went to call her name, which made me feel even more isolated. It was so strange to be up on our hill alone.
A bitter wind whistled around the crest of the hill. I tugged my scarf tighter around my neck and wished I had worn a hat. It was so cold. Far too cold for a morning in March.
As I looked to the tiny ant-like people walking along the river bank below, the scene misted up before my eyes. It was not the same...
My sister signed me up for yoga the day before yesterday. And all I could think about were the yoga girl's toenails. She was the participant in front of me, on a pink mat patterned with yellow flowers. Sitting in the most uncomfortable position of my life, it was her toenails that bothered me. Sitting 10 inches in front of my face, yellowed and cracked, with an attempted cover up of aquamarine polish. "Excuse me, " I wanted to say, "That toenail polish does nothing for you." Or perhaps, "Excuse me, could you help me get my elbow out of...
"I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead."
His eyes flickered open squinting in the unaccustomed sunlight. He started to rise but remained immobile. Panic began to set in. It was then that he noticed the girl slumped against the wall face ashen white. She glanced up at the ceiling and his eyes followed hers. He saw the skylight and his struggles became frantic. She was smiling now. "A trap. The bitch must have dosed herself up with ", he thought. those dammed odourless garlic...
Hello city, hello Amy's boyfriend way down there. Hello penny. Let's see if it's so, what I remember from 4th grade about what happens when you drop a penny off the Empire State. On this street we walked and I wanted to yell at people who cat called her and to ask them if they had mother's and shame them. Down by the sudsy Hudson River we laid out and looked at the buildings and talked about Kenya, about the merits of going away and trying to talk ourselves into a compulsion to stay. On that bench she cried at...