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....
Jason Adams was writing his last thriller. He wasn't concerned that it would be his last novel, in fact, it was as if all of his previous work had led him to this moment. This novel would be as close to real life as he could get.
Mark woke up, and in an instant he realized he was not in his bed. It was dark and damp, and he smelled blood. Just when he was about to stand up he heard the whimpering of a woman.
"Hello? Hello? Anyone, please help me. Where am I? Please, help me. Please" Janet...
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...
The young man ran toward the park building, surrounded by trees, bushes, and several high-rises that glowered down like overbearing siblings eyeing their sibling's latest suitor. The boy was soaking wet, his heart beat furiously in his chest, and his eyes were wide with terror. He knew they were still behind him. They'd already came after his mother, forcing him to leave her far behind if he wanted to escape with his life.
The boy's feet slapped against the ground as he approached the glass door. Yanking it open, eh rushed into a cool white-walled lobby where a handful of...
My own pink shoes were the last thing I saw. Then, darkness. I tried to put together the pieces of the puzzle in those final moments but nothing seemed to fit. I was supposed to go to work that morning.
Supposed to. That would haunt me. I was supposed to do a lot of things. I was supposed to pay my rent on time, I was supposed to pick my daughter up from school, I was supposed to meet my husband for dinner that night. It seemed none of that would be happening now.
That morning, after taking the dog...
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....
I walked down the street with my pants around my ankles, arms akimbo, doing the Super Bowl Shuffle with a boombox wrapped around my ears. I had picked up 20 D batteries at the store, and if I was going to do something, I was going to do it right.
With the screaming vocals of Ronnie James Dio blaring from two overworked speakers, I strutted along the Santa Monica Pier. Rather, I did the Penguin Push all down the boardwalk. It was times like these when I was proud to say that I could rock out with my cock out....
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....
Marchiel was wondering again. Wondering what Francis was up to. He was awfully quiet in the living room. She had left him alone for less than ten minutes to fold the laundry. He had been building towers contentedly, block by purposely placed block. But now it was awfully silent. When she got back into the living room the sliding door was open, and her 4 year old was no longer building with blocks. Marchiel raced to the door and stumbled over the thresh hold, as Francis, his big eyes all alight stood by the tree bleeding. An uprooted rose bush...
£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...