Sam, having slung hot dogs into buns on the street corner for the majority of his 35 years, had seen a lot. A lot of anger, a lot of hurt, a lot of disgust. He though he had seen it all until today. He served up the Ball Park Frank with sauerkraut as he usually did, hot off the grill and dripping with grease, and the blue collar recipient took it in hand, as they usually do, and generously dressed it with the brown spicy mustard that was the typical street corner fare. They never had time for much else--eating...
"Wait, so he hit you?"
She hadn't meant to let it slip. She'd done so well hiding the cause behind the bruise on her cheekbone for the past few hours, passing it off as nothing. She couldn't even remember what she'd said that had revealed the truth... something about getting into a fight over something stupid. Shannon had put two and two together and, well, there was no denying it now.
Lacey waved a hand through the air, discarding it as if it was nothing. "He didn't mean to," she sighed, turning to the mirror to examine the extent of...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She was the last surviving member of the Yoshi Crew, a band who had until recently been quite the rage amongst the in-crowd of Berlin. Her devil-may-care attitude and foul mouth had won her a place in the hearts and minds of Berlin's anti-establishment, anti-casual, anti-everything crowd. In Beijing, things had gone more than a little wrong. Mechmal, the under-fed, over-exaggerated singer had found them a gig at a nightclub in the centre of Beijing's equivalent of Soho as they worked their way around the world....
It was so completely and utterly disgusting. the boys were throwing the book round the room while she fumed and screamed at them. the other girls teamed up to stop them. after they were kicked out of the classroom and punished, they just joked around and acted like it was all fun and games. after that incident, that was where i stepped in. i went to the library and wrote down every book in the database that concerned dealing with bullying and peer pressure, then brought it to the teacher as a list of references she could look to. but...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up. She knew every detail of his face: the way his nose arched in between his eyes, the way the left side of his lip always rose a little higher when he smirked as he walked by, and that freckle under his ear that she always imagined kissing.
They had worked in the same office for about six months now, and since he walked in she could not take her eyes off him. They would talk very casually, about the boring weekly...
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...
She'd have preferred the electric chair. Being in the San Francisco State Women's Penitentiary was, well, prison. The orange jumpsuits were tacky. And the food was simply disgusting. She could not believe that she had been jailed for Aren's crime. She'd witnessed, but Aren's lawyer daddy had pulled some strings and landed her in this disgusting hole. Aren should be wearing that jumpsuit. The murder had been gruesome. How could the judge think that a preppy, pretty girl like her would get her hands dirty with such a thing? As soon as her sentence was over (fortunately, the judge had...
"there was blood on my pillow and a noose in my heart"
These country singers were getting downright moros, good though. I flipped the dial on the radio looking for a talk station, always helped to find a little of the local flavor, keep me grounded or at the very least feeling like I was grounded. I was play acting at this and many other lives and I knew it but kept it up.
The telephone poles ticked away - wooshing peripiphialy.
The great desert southwest of my heart was blooming with the rare cactus flower of love.
In a...
"I have something to tell you."
These are not words you want to hear from your girlfriend when you first walk in the door after a late night at work. Still, Lewis tried to stay calm, tried not to let his imagination get ahead of him. He sat down at the formica kitchen table, looking up at Sadie. She was actually wringing her hands. He thought that only happened in stories. A long pause...
"Well, honey? What is it? You're making me kind of nervous here."
"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I just... Ok. Here goes. I'm... I'm a...
"I know you're up there," she screamed against the roar of waves crashing on the rocks. "And I know you can hear me. We have to talk, please come down."
A tugboat groaned out in the bay, and the gulls squawked overhead.
"It's bright enough today, you don't need to be up there.Please come down."
The wind whistled.
"Fine. Be that way. Make me stand down here and yell. I don't care. Actually, this is the perfect metaphor for our relationship. Me down here trying to talk to you and you boarded up in your useless tower. You think you...