Words like knives, thrown back and forth across the room, like a death-defying circus act.
Husband and wife tossing sharp insults, from the couch to the kitchen doorway. Neither landing anything deep, glancing wounds, already scraping scarred tissue.
Neither really feels anything for the other anymore. But the dance, the battle, the contest keeps them together. Light reflects of the blades as they flip and fly.
Thud into walls. Plink against the floors. Bounce of their scaly armour of experience, disdain and dull hate. It aches in their bellies. They think it might offer some release, against the mounting pressure....
The dystopia is a genre of fiction designed to teach a lesson about society by imaging a future society warped in some terrible way. The interesting thing about dystopian novels is their reliance on a single, antagonistic character to provide a terrible monologue of exposition to the horrified protagonist, explaining just how and why society went bad, and why the system must persist.
George Orwell's 1984 has O'brien, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has Mustafa Mond, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 has Captain Beatty, the remarkably well-read "fireman" who has turned his back on all that literature had to offer...
"Honey?"
"What is it?" Sharon asked, not looking up from her work.
"Do you know why there are a couple of police outside wearing masks?"
"Um ... can't say that I do," she lied. Damn. They weren't supposed to get here so soon.
"Shall I let them in?" Camden said.
"Sure," Sharon replied. "We have nothing to hide, right, dear?"
A minute later, the two were standing before her in the living room. "Sharon Vasquez?" one of them said.
"That's me," Sharon said blithely.
"You're under arrest."
"What for?" she said, trying to sound indignant.
"The charge is causing a...
You can count me out. I don't care how fun and amazing and what a once in a lifetime opportunity you say this'll be. You can coax and you can pull but I swear on the liquor soaked heart of my father I am not moving from this spot.
It won't be a fresh, new experience. My soul won't suddenly bloom open like a flower because I tried this. I won't be able to see through time or space.
It's stupid. The whole idea is just stupid. You're asking for trouble, that's what you are doing. Not even asking, you're...
"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...
My father and I were lying on the beach wondering why the moon looked larger than usual. My father argued idly--something about the flat terrain and the empty skyline. "If we could see a house, or a tree, or a traffic light, it wouldn't look so big."
It was a stupid explanation, but we are not the kind of people who carry iPhones, and whip them out to settle any debate. We hate those people. They ruin everything.
We'd been drinking wine from the motel's paper cups. We'd run out of wine a long time ago, but occasionally we still...
Nothing will matter then, everything will be gone. I will stand and watch them all. The humans running about their days with not a care in the world. Not knowing what is about to happen to them. Everything to them is important when really it is just crap. Who cares?
After tomorrow they will be nothing but dust not even a memory on the bottom of my shoe. I have seen this so many times, I have watched and laughed as human race after human race gets cleared out and started again. And each one is just as arrogant as...
"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...
Mia and John sat by the stones, and no one noticed them.
"You shouldn't be here." John explained.
"My dad's hated here, so what? I need to know the truth."
John ducked under a tree, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. "Your dad is traced back to you. His enemies are yours now."
"You mean people want to kill me?"
"Just people you're dad took from." John said quietly, a blur against the dark stones.
Mia looked at him, incredulous. "It could be any of these people."
She looked around, and saw people through windows, walking through the streets,
"Lorenzo, no!" King Tremain howled, his eyes blazing with the flames of anger and betrayal.
Lorenzo, a traitor to his superior acquaintance, wielded the gleaming sword, it's sharp edges threating to destroy the feeble man who lay before it.
Despite the cries of sheer terror that penetrated the air of the castle dining room, Lorenzo's mind failed to subvert its attention from anything but his original goal. 'Overthrow the king'.
He swiftly raised the shining blade above his head and in one final burst of adrenaline, Lorenzo brought it downwards, wholeheartedly piercing the King who lay helplessly