The man wrote to the woman down by the river Yo. He had finished in the fields and his brother was calling from the high hill.
"Young!" he screamed "the soldiers are here!"
The man dropped his pen. The notepaper, pink and full of tiny perforations the man had made in the shape of a lotus flower, flew in the direction of a crane's nest. A young bird who was wading blinked at it. Soon, it began to rain.
The soldiers carried out the brother and left behind the others. A girl ran to the river for the pen as...
In hindsight, the solution was obvious. But then solutions always are when viewed backwards, from the end of the equation. It would be like saying I really oughtn't to have had that extra slice of cake, in hindsight I know that. But at the time, in the moment, faced with that cake all covered in icing and topped with cherries and accompanied with cream, the thick and runny kind, not having it wasn't an option. And then there was peer pressure and all of that complex mess to wade through. It had been the same at school, when she had...
"The flight was agonizingly long, and that was the positive part of the experience.We had reserved a cab a week before, because we didn't want to drive out there and then try to find parking."
"I could have found a spot."
"Ignore him, he's convinced he a dowsing rod of available parking. Anyway, we had made a reservation for six a.m. At a quarter to seven a car screams to a stop in the driveway. You can still see the skidmarks. We were so angry."
"You were angry. I never even wanted to go."
"I told you to ignore him....
The lamp wouldn't turn on.
Goddamn electricity company, Rob grumbled to himself, angrily flicked the switch a few more times just to make sure. This was the third power cut they had had this week, and it wasn't exactly the warmest of months to be sitting in a house at night. And without light flooding the streets and houses, the chance of an attack increased by about a thousand percent.
Night was falling, most people were already in their houses, door and windows securely bolted and nailed shut, wooden shutters and planks covering every possible entrance. Rob shut his own...
"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...
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...
I wish I had some pop. Not just regular pop though. A&W Rootbeer. Yeah, that would be amazing right now. But then again I think that stuff has some addictive narcotics in it. They put some crazy foreign mouse hair crushed up with lima beans and introduce it to the mixture before brewing. And then we drink it. Drink it all up and it fizzes as it goes down our throats and into our tummy's. And then it goes through our intestines and filtered into our bladder where it has a big fizz party! But that's when the lima beans...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. The rain was falling around her and she looked out into the street, wondering when she should make her break for it. Sensing that the rain wouldn't let up for quiet some time, she dashed onto the streets holding her package close to her chest. Her eyes flitted from side to side as she transversed the narrow streets and alleys.
She saw the blue door ahead of her and pumped her legs harder, eager to reach her destination. She threw herself against the door with a...
"I'm falling in love with her."
"Oh, that's nice, that really is." She watched him sit up, get up, finding his clothes. "I'm glad."
"That means that this stops."
She frowned. "What? Why?"
He turned to stare at her. "Why? Because this is cheating as it is, let alone -"
"This is just physical. Let her have the emotional and let me have the physical." She got out of bed, sauntering towards him, smirking when he turned away. "There's no reason to stop."
"I really feel something for her. I don't want to hurt her."
"You aren't hurting her. She'll...
The red gown was more of a crimson really. I wasn't sure why she had taken it just to sit down at a doorway just down the street. She had shown up with enough money for a new garment, I'd given it to her and she'd just sort of walked aimlessly down to the doorway and sat down.
It kind of made me hate her. I know you shouldn't hate little girls but I hated this bullshit. I mean, seriously, just leave. Don't make me sit there and wonder about what the fuck is going on. Like, I don't need...