She was stuck inside her own dream it felt like. All around her was fog and darkness. Okay, so it had to have been a nightmare. Alice tread lightly over the crunchy leaves and snapping twigs. Hands outstreched and head down so as not to get hit in the face with the seemingly large tree branches surrounding her.
She started to hear music, something she'd heard before, from her dad's record collection maybe? No. From a movie? She couldn't pinpoint the sorrow female voice she heard singing; as Alice walked more closely, she realized the song was not a song,...
The year was 1986. The date, 17th of February. It was cold out. A thin blanket of snow covered the ground and the sky was tonged with light grey.
It's true what they say, you forget the pain the instant it's over. As I lay, in an exhausted daze, holding you in my arms for the first time, the twenty eight hours of agony I'd just endured couldn't have been further from my mind.
You had a shock of dark hair, I still wonder at where that came from. Me and your daddy were both fair. Your tiny little hands...
He stood inside the pen, staring out at the approaching truck warily. It was a large vehicle, blood red with a black stripe down the center and dust billowing out behind it as it drove down the dirt road. Slowly, the truck came to park outside of the house and the driver's side door opened.
There came a grunt as a black wheelchair was pulled out and onto the ground. The dog's tail immediately began to wag as he saw the sandy-haired man open the chair, then plop a cushion into the seat. Another grunt and the broad-shouldered man was...
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...
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.
The first day of school and he was already in a fight. Mark sighed as the three seventh graders approached him from three different directions. His electric blue eyes took in the boy in front of him, a lanky kid with a bulbous nose and mean eyes. Beside him, another boy stood with his arms crossed over his broad chest, a sneer on his face. And behind him, Mark knew, was the last boy, a slack-lipped teenager with dull, incurious eyes.
“Lunch money,” Skinny said, holding out his hand.
“No,” Mark replied coolly as he sat back in his black...
They lay like glass shards, scattered on the floor. Their unblinking eyes frozen pleading into nothingness. The atmosphere was as quiet as the darkest hour of midnight. It was still, as if nature even knew itself that there was no life here.
I took a step. Into this horror room.
My foot caught a flag, a great red flag with a swastika emblazoned on it.
This symbol was the representation of this cruelty
No life deserved to be here.
She was the most delicate girl in town - pale skin stretched tight over a skeletal face, hair the colour of fresh milk, body tall and angular. Her eyes were of the softest blue, her cheeks flushed pastel pink, her lips like an English rose. Fragile, barely there, more ghost than anything real: that's what people said about her, that's what they thought when they passed her in the street. But as delicate as she was, as insubstantial, there was something very real and present in the way that she held herself and in the manner of her walk. One...
Bombs were the last thing on his mind. Literally. Jim was struck dead-on in the head by a warhead, and, naturally, it killed him instantly.
But when Jim regained awareness, it was in a huge warehouse, cordoned off into a long line; others were standing in single-file, inching slowly toward what appeared to be some sort of bank teller's window. From the looks of the line, however, he didn't think he'd be getting service any time soon--the line doubled back on itself at least fifteen times.
Hours passed, people crept, and he eventually got within ten people back of the...
I met my wife in an elevator, stuck between floors. We planned the rest of our lives while we waited for rescue. She wore plaid; me, my typical blue jeans and T-shirt. She was coming from work, me from school. I seem to recall it was something in her eyes. The way they watched me shift, the way they followed the movement of my lips as I explained why I was still single at 30. The deliveryman pretended not to notice us, and we thought that was the funniest thing. He stood under 5 feet tall, and for over 3...