The mannequin looked so real, but was not. Apparently. At least that's what Mr Saunders always said, and he had to be right. He was a teacher, wasn't he? He was my teacher and, at nine years old, I believed every word he said.
And yet, every morning as I passed it on my walk to school, the mannequin - whom I had named Joyce - in the window of J. T. Kingsley's department store seemed to watch me as I went. Seemed to call to me, to invite me in. That was, after all, her job. But she did...
i thought we were best friends, eternal companions, trustworthy confidants. warriors on a mission, one for all and all for one. little did i realize just how wrong i was. you set yourself up for attention, while i slip away into the shadows. you possess the ability to break things, while i possess the ability to clean up the mess. i stand up and defend you when others prey upon you, but you simply stand back and watch as they prey upon me. i fight your battles as well as my own, a lone warrior. but today is the day...
Smile for the camera
He was of an age when he knew he didn't want snatches of reality - no, no, reality was already all around him, he'd had more than enough reality.
He wanted a false joy, the kind of happiness only captured in an instamatic, the image that would was all at once meaningless and meaningful.
In later life he'd write for hours on end about the false smiles that don't reach the eyes, about what those expressions really mean, what's really going on beneath the surface, the realities that can be extracted from the falsehoods.
But -...
The birds had not come in last night and now they would be lost.
Common birds! She spat twirling a small gold spoon in her coffee clattering nervously on the edge of the doll like cup.
So long years of sorrow, so long back breaking toil. The training, the binding of tiny claws the midnight dropper feedings. All of it for nothing. Now they would peck at trash and pretend to get excited when they heard the fog horns of a garbage trawl.
Why do I bother? She picked a tiny scar at the corner of her mouth and drank...
The pistol was cocked, ready to go. The asassin tracked the victim across the city, determined to finish his mission. He slid through the shadows, his black clothing blending perfectly with the night. Suddenly, the victim stopped. The killer was on alert at once. he lifted the 45. caliber and readied himself to pull the trigger. Suddenly, it all went black. He had been knocked to the gr
I remember sitting there, minding my own business. The wind was a slightly moving napkins about the table. In frustration, I put my glass on the stack to keep it from dancing in the breeze.
As I sitting, waiting for Charles to arrive for our lunch, she walked by.
It was a fleeting moment, to say the least. But my slouched pose suddenly corrected itself. I was no longer concerned with the wind or its affect on napkins.
She was crossing the street, coming toward the cafe. She was wearing a red summer dress, and it being an August evening,...
£18000. That's all it would take. But it was more than Charles had, that was certain. He gazed in wonder at that glossy, dog-eared magazine page. Awe, even. He had been looking at that same page every morning for the past fourteen years and with a sigh he would fold the mag shut and let it sit on his lap and lean his head back and rock. The rocking chair had belonged to his father. That was the only thing of his father's that he ever got. The cancer got him, a few years earlier. The rest of the family...
When I was in Beijing, my dear, I saw a small lass with an ape of a face crouched in an alley and weeping for who knows who. I noticed she was wearing the cheap red cape I bought for you in H&M. When I was in Istanbul I saw a knock-kneed street performer whose laugh was the same as yours. Some graffiti that I ran across somewhere on the east edges of Paris resembled your handwriting, when you scrawled notes left for me coming home legless and too late. I say this not to make you think there are...
The Skeleton Key was lying on the dresser, as it had for as long as he could remember. It meant more to him now than it ever had-now that he realized what was in the locked chest. She never even considered that he might wonder what was in the chest.
Now, as he arrived home from the hospital, having suffered a minor heart attack, the skeleton key lying on the dresser piqued his desire to finally open the chest. His own chest had been locked up for so long, enclosing his own heart--not fully experiencing what a heart has the...
She was a girl, he was a guy. She was beautiful and he praised the ground that she walked on. He couldn't stop thinking about her. The only way he would be able to fall asleep at night is with thoughts of her laying beside him whispering in his ear "everything will be alright".
She does not exist.
Instead he lays awake, not thinking of anyone. He thinks of death and of not-existing anymore. He cannot sleep because only in sleep does death occur. He doesn't want to die, but he has no reason to live.
Motivation to live has...