She hoped she was dreaming, but it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt unnervingly real as she and her belongings fell, the ground coming closer and closer, faster and faster. She remembered going to bed, and she HAD been asleep, but now…
It had to be a dream. Had to be. Where had she fallen from, if not? And where had all these… these… things come from? Three alarm clocks? A pineapple? She briefly wondered whether there were any Freudian links here, decided there probably were, considering the banana and teddy bears. Perfect essay fodder for her psychology degree....
Well would you believe it? There I was sat on my couch balancing a plate of egg and chips on my knee when his face flashed all over the news. Didn't do much for my carpet I can tell you, egg yolk stains are a devil to remove, not to mention the ketchup spillage. But I digress. There was our Tony in a naval officers uniform. Well I had to laugh cos it's been at least ten years since I've seen him out of his oily overalls. Scruffy little blighter he is, not very talkative, even worse since that cow...
Balanced on the line, he told her again, "Put it down!" Danielle wouldn't listen. She had never listened to her master.
She held the wand in trembling fingers, pointed end toward herself. "Stay back!" she called. "I'm going to use this!"
"No!" Master Reginald called. He'd reached out, without thinking, a hand. His own wand was in his robe pocket. Could he reach it in time? "You have so much to live for!"
"Like what?" Danielle screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I'm the worst student in class. Even Betty Browning is better than me at everything."
The master straightened....
I was on my way to Times Square to buy myself some coffee at Starbucks. I rested down for a little bit at one of the tables and noticed a man outside the window asking some people for loose change. I stared at my coffee and back at the man and I went outside and walked towards the man. He had scrawny, dirty hands and he looked like he hadn't bathe in weeks. I then asked him kindly if he has hungry. He had the brightest look in his eye and that toothy grin. He gladly accepted and we both...
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....
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...
My kids are always begging me to go to Disneyland. I suppose I'm not alone in this. The thing that kills me is how well they argue their position. It's like I'm raising a pack of lawyers in my home. That's maybe the worst part of the whole thing - imagining that I'm incubating the next generation of shysters simply by encouraging my kids to back up the claims they make.
That's why I continue to refuse to take them to Disneyland even though they've mustered some really good arguments in their favor. I don't want them to think that...
There is a place, near where I used to live, that looked like this - you see it, right there? It's a bowling green. Not the bowling you and I would do, the bowling that belongs to another age. Mostly the elderly.
There were, in fact, two near me - high amusement, I can tell you, since we came to the conclusion that one had decided it was a rival for the other. And that said other had no idea that it existed. That this perceived rivalry would fuel them entirely, even though the other lived in blissful ignorance of...
"Travel light, but take everything with you." That was the only advice my father ever gave me, before he left. I was six.
I took it to heart, it was the only thing I had of him. I never knew where he went, he told me it was important, but that's what you tell a child when you have to leave, no matter the reason. So when mother died, I was seventeen with nothing to me but that advice. I decided to seek out my father, to know where he had gone, to walk in his footsteps. I needed to...
She wanted to kill her. She wanted to murder the girl who got me fired. Why? I couldn't explain.