It's not easy being funny.
People expect things of you. They come to you down in the mouth, looking for a laugh. Most of the time you can oblige them, but it's hard creating something from nothing. I'm not a music box that you can wind up and expect to hear a tune. At least say "please."
I guess it comes from watching too much television. Sitcoms really mold a kid who spends half his day on the couch. That, and a willingness to tell the truth to people's faces.
Anyway, it's easy to ask for a laugh. It's just...
She stood there, covered in nothing but a crimson gown, shivering against the cold.
The rain fell down in a perfect arc around her, as the doorway spared her from the worst of the elements.
Glancing out, she caught my eye, and there was only one thing to do.
Or so I thought, but as I crossed the road, running to escape the never-ending sheetm with my coat over my head, I failed to see the bike that was heading, at speed, towards me.
A scream, a crumpling of flesh and metal and a release of the reason I crossed...
Gavin was gloating. "Enjoy your final moments, Kevin ... maybe use them to wonder how I found you. Good-bye ..."
He dismissively gestured at Paul, his personal bodyguard and hitman. Paul, with an expression of a stone, drew a nine-millimeter out of his coat and pointed it at me.
I had to stop him. "Paul, I can give you two very good reasons not to pull that trigger."
Paul said nothing. But he also did nothing. "First: I know where Kendra is."
That got his attention. He still didn't move, though. "She's in China, which you probably already know, but...
She glanced demurely across the two-foot circle of a table at him. What a catch. His work shirt was only slightly ill-fitting, his hair feigned casualness. He couldn't stop looking at her. It may have been the needless extra half-inch of cleavage she had allowed.
There really wasn't any need to try. His work-weary eyes and somewhat hunched shoulders showed that he could use some fun. His seemingly lackadaisical approach, charming smile and the comfortable way he asked her out meant that he'd taken girls here before. The Portland City Grill, 30 floors up in the highest building in Portland....
She stood waiting by the binoculars. How sappily romantic was that? She shook her head at her own ridiculousness.
To distract herself, she gazed out across the city. The beautiful city she called home.
From here, everything was so clear and straight. The roads looked easy to navigate, like one could never get lost.
She had moved to this city four years ago. Following a dream, a memory. Some how she had stumbled upon him. And he was, real.
He was also no where to be seen.
She looked down at her wrist for the watch she didn't wear anymore,...
We are there. We are in the shadows, in the gaps, in the spaces between words. We are in every moment where you pull away, where discretion replaces narrative, we are there.
We are there in the knowledge that you do not write all things that happen, we are there, waiting in the wings, filling in the gaps, in the spaces.
You did not write us - you never write us, nobody writes us (and who would read us, who would read every banal moment, every second, what soul could stand the painful inevitability of one moment following the next...
She heard their labored breathing coming closer now. She huddled closer into the doorway, willing herself to be blend into the red painted facade of the building. She shut her eyes, a childish hold-over, believing that if she couldn't seem them, they couldn't see her. Of course she knew that wasn't true, but maybe if she closed her eyes, tight enough, she could mute the pounding of her heart; a sound so loud she was convinced her pursuers could hear it echoing in the damp and empty alley way.
"BANG!" She nearly screamed out, at the sudden and intrusive sound....
"It's meant to get better."
He looked at the empty glass in front of him, studied the bottom, as if it was going to promise him that it would get better.
It didn't. It also didn't refill itself.
"It will."
He glanced up - of course, he could, at least, rely on his best friend.
Well. One of them. Since the other one had -
That glass was still empty. That could cause a problem.
"She's still gone."
"That isn't going to change."
This paticular best friend may prove to be useless - oh, no, wait, he was hailing the...
Until now, she'd never thought of herself as pretty. Standing in front of the mirror in her brand new $800 gown, she surveyed the woman staring back at her. Straight black hair brushed her jaw, defining vivid blue eyes. Long limbs made for a pleasing figure and as she ran her hands over the smooth fabric of the dress, she thought she just might impress him tonight. Or at least, she would be rid of her problem.
She pushed open the door and entered the elegant white room where the party was being held. He didn't pass up the opportunity...
In the beginning, there were no gods.
A human boy named Micah, not yet a man, was the first to make the discovery that if the Earth existed, then there must be a heaven; a divine source, a metaphysical origin of the crude, material plane that we inhabit. And so, partly by accident, and partly by perseverance, he discovered the doorway to heaven.
He went through it without a second thought. His other human peers had always mocked him for being too short, too weak, too strange. His family ignored him. He had the time to uncover the doorway because...