I didn't want to do it, really. Jimbo was fooling around at the register and the clerk was eying us nervously. Next thing I know I'm holding the gun while Jimbo vaults the counter. He's crazed and scared and mad and his voice is shaking and the clerk is pissing himself and I know this is gonna end bad. I'm waving the gun like a toy and I get this weird feeling in my gut and my head starts to sing and I feel anger well up and my vision narrows and I'm yelling too now and the guy is...
It was easy to sit at the beach.
The sea could've been swirling around her toes, if she so wished, she could've been leaping up and jumping over the waves with gay abandon, giggling, squealing with delight as they tickled the hem of her skirt.
Or the sand could've been squelching between her toes, getting stuck in niggling places, to be found later on as she padded barefoot through the house (except that she wouldn't be barefoot, she'd be sandfoot - grains attaching themselves to her skin and not leaving for days - weeks? - on end).
Or she could...
The daring were punished but Alexia hated living at boarding school. She slipped her feet out from under the blanket on her bed, already fully clothed. Quietly, so as not to wake the other girls, she walked to the window, grabbed a warm shawl to wrap around her shoulders, and flung her legs out over the edge of the window sill. She carefully propelled herself forward, flew gracefully through the air, and landed on the ground beneath her window.
A smile spread across her face as she began to walk away from the large brick building that had been her...
lost, without a hand to hold. I stood there in the darkness. At first I thought it'd be worth it. Now I was thinking, not so much. I followed the narrow dirt trail farther into the trees. The scurrying of squirrels and other night creatures kept me on my toes. In my head, I pictured myself in a horror movie. But I was the one character who got out alive. I passed many trees. Straining to see through the dark, cold air. I called for him over and over. Each time there was no reply. I stood there, listening to...
On the top of a roof, in Australia, there was a chair carved from an Italian carpenter in the 18th century. It was a day that was certain to rain and a day that was certain to never get better. `A man sat on the old chair while thinking about his day and how he could improve it. It was a day that was clearly never going to get better and a day that made everyone feel down and upset.
He read the card quietly as he walked along the Great Wall. "Explore," it said. "Dream," it read. "Discover," it implored.
Well, he'd done all of that. He came to China on a whim with his girlfriend and explored the sites. He went to the Great Wall and to Beijing, to little towns and big cities,. He dreamed with her of starting a family when they saw a woman with her child nestled in her arms, a man walking beside her and holding her close. And he discovered, when she was shot down for the little bit in her purse,...
Heaven; such a harmonious place.
With luscious trees and elevated mountains.
A lighthouse standing tall in the distance;
An lingering canoe floating in the shimmering lake.
Billowy clouds soaring across the sky.
A car driving down the road.
God is in presence;
We are in heaven.
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
"Are you my mom?" she would ask to the passersby.
Some people would stop and inquire if she was lost, but she would just shake her head.
Some people would offer to take the girl with them to the police, but she would just run away down a narrow alley where they couldn't follow.
Most people would just ignore her and her perfect, shining red gown, taking her for some unlucky trickster.
But one day, a young woman came down the street, her eyes veiled in...
She opened the envelope and screamed.
"He's coming to get me!" Keri shouted, "Zachary's coming to get me!"
Keri wanted nothing more than to leave her life in New York and move South to be with Zachary.They dated briefly, he proposed, she said no, and that was it. It wasn't just that she said no, he wasn't entirely serious and she was only 18.
Keri married Jack a few days before her 25th birthday, and she was completely in love with him. She never forgot Zachary, even on their wedding day. Zachary, or Zak as she called him, was her...
Ricky did not realize that Luca Brazzi was a man's name, and so, all confused, he had dumped someone completely different, the wife of an architect named Lucia Brazziana (the wife not the architect), in the Hudson river, and had then sent a coded message to the Corlione family. As for Luca Brazzi, he did not sleep with the fishes; he simply overslept. So one can imagine Titaglia's confusion when he showed up, unannounced, with an icepick in hand, and stabbed it through Titaglia's eyeball.
This was in the era before horse heads and cardinals. When a vague optimism was...