You can count me out. You really think I'm going to use that thing? that dangerous, weapon-like thing? You really think I'm going to lug around four pounds of dead animal flesh? Think again. Don't even get me started on the sphere of death as I like to call it. Have you noticed how it comes toward its victim, hurling itself through space at a hundred and seventy-five miles per hour, no conscious, just aim and fire. It's not for me. I'm not saying I'm a wimp, I'm not saying you're crazy. I'm saying I have no wish to die....
The bass pounded next door. pounded this door. pounded so loudly that louis put his head on his desk and pounded with it. he got up from his studying to give his next door neighbor a pound for a pound. and that's when his bed started shaking. Earthquake, he thought. and dived under his desk for safety. wait a minute, he thought, am i supposed to hide underneath the desk or a doorway. and then he noticed his desk wasn't shaking. just his bed. that is against the wall that he shares with his neighbor. then he heard the moaning...
She was the most delicate girl in town. I liked to think of her as something made out of matchsticks, and knobby joints. Her voice, it never seemed to mature, even as she stretched into a teenager, and curves set in, she would still skitter on her toes, and wring her hands, and never make eye contact.
The crush I developed on her was no not so unusual, I think the whole town was in love with her in their own way, male, female, child, animal. Girls like that aren't meant to last if you think about it. Those quiet...
The disco ball turned on its dusty axis, shining pixels of glitter light across their worn faces and twinkling in their liquid eyes. Eyes that darted to the front door when someone walked through. This hotel bar was the opposite of pretension, the only tension coming from the anticipation of meeting someone to make the night less lonely.
He came in for a beer--procrastinating to book his hotel for a corporate conference plus budget cuts at work meant he had a room at a low budget hotel. All the eyes followed him as he took a spot at the bar....
The alligator with the cardboard mouth. The whipped cream on the stairs. Hollow clang. Syncopated clatter.
The brighter colors remind me of childhood. Not that adulthood has been faded yellows or softening greys. But a luminescent green or radiant orange triggers my primary nostalgia.
The set is bare. The slice of bread reads 5 in ketchup. A lazy harmonica.
When time runs out here, it starts over there. Follow the alligator king.
Silence.
The vicar cleared his throat. 'Do you Isabella Riley take....'
'I heard you.' she said, suddenly reappearing from the dream world which had captivated. 'I er... I don't.'
Suddenly aware of a hundred pairs of eyes, she took a deep breath. Ben's mouth fell open. Shock visibly clear on his face.
'Iz?'
'don't Ben.' she murmured. She had to get out of this church. She couldn't possibly marry him. Be commited to one man for the rest of her life. She just couldn't do it.
'But Iz. What? I mean, why?'
'I'm sorry Ben. I really am so, so...
"Knives."
The scientist looked up. The musician was bright-eyed, excited, although there were bags under his eyes. She replaced her spectacles (why did she always take them off for the close-up work? It didn't make sense) and gave him her full attence. "Knives?"
"Knives." He sat down on the stool, gangly, limbs too long. He was not suited for the labratory - not a huge surprise, really. "Knives are the answer. We...we cut."
It was almost cute, watching him try to describe what he presumed the scientific method was. "Do you mean dissection?"
He nodded, enthusiastic, excited. "Yes! Yes, we...
The traitor looked at the girl with caramel coloured eyes through the bars of her cell. His glance paused at her bare breasts, then travelled up to meet her shimmering gaze.
"All you had to do was look the other way, and run with the rest of them," he said. "But no. Your stubborn principles got in the way and look where they have brought you."
The girl stared at him, whishing daggers in his eyes, his heart and his groin.
"Now, now," he said. "You don't seem too receptive to the guards advances. It's a shame, things would be...
"Travel light."
"But take everything with you."
A murmur of confusion ran across the gathered crowd.
"That will only slow us down!" The young man who had been such a cool head through all of their troubles spoke firmly, with an authority far greater than his age would normally have allowed.
"We can't allow them to find anything which they could use against us." The town drunk retaliated. Or at least, that was all he had been, until the shadow began to cross the land and the war drums had begun to beat once more, since then, he had been...
Morlane hung his head. At times like these, his emotions were torments of conflict. He was grateful, yes; but he was ashamed. He was melancholy, true; but he was jubilant. Every month for the last 4 years he had made the trek; every month he had experienced these emotions again. He couldn't talk to anyone about these feelings. His father, raised on a quiet farm, couldn't know about such things. His fiancee, sophisticated city girl that she was, couldn't be expected to understand. Only his regiment could understand. And he was the only one left. Except for --
"GOD BLESS...