The wall is the place most people choose on their own. You come for a day or a week and it's never to see the sights. The sights are immaterial, and not unexpected. Temples, tea houses with dripping peremera trees hanging soot and sleek flowers over damp pollenated tables. Once thriving book shops and market warrens closed down by the proper authorities. Cab drivers who direct you round about ways and never give useful directions. None of these things are unusual, or particularly memorable. It is instead, the wall itself, that calls to you. The wall is the reason you...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
The warm dirty mist saturates every poor. Across the street relentless construction of new industry raged on erasing the remnants of an older time.
The girl tries to imagine the world as it was, as she has learned in her history books. But now only progress and drives her world. She can not hear or picture the silence or the wildernesses she imagines and longs for. She grows weary of the diminishing magic of the unknown.
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...
Fights tend to start for no apparent reason. I say that was rude, then you tell me I was snotty first. It's a freakin' white t-shirt we argue over. One of mine I ruined myself with the blue detergent that sits on the washing machine. You throw it because I'm mad you brought it upstairs in the first place, when I was going to bleach it in the next day or so. Then I get more mad and tell you to not be mean to me, when really I guess I was the mad one in the first place. This...
The disco ball was turning. I couldn't believe it. The big night had finally arrived. The day I had been waiting for for four years: My senior prom. I had gotten the nerve to ask the homecoming queen, Jill, to the dance. I remmeber I was so nervous when I asked her. It was during 4th period English class. My teacher was asking us to do some stupid thematic connection activity, and I leaned over and said, "Hey, Jill, umm....would you...." She looked at me like I had 1,000 heads, and they were not handsome heads. I started to falter....
He ran into the room, his heart pounding, and his clothes soaking wet. There had not been a storm, at least, not that one could have seen. But rain fell on him nonetheless. A ghost of a storm, haunting him.
It was like some cartoon raincloud that hovered over him, that soaked him. He carried an umbrella everywhere, drawing strange looks. In an effort to avoid this, he had gone fancy, eschewing the utilitarian umbrellas, the ones meant to fold up, to fit in a purse or a pocket.
No, he used full length umbrellas, massive black umbrellas with gold...
The children were not at school. They were not at home. Monica was frantic at the thought of Danny and Eric being missing. Where did they go? It was 7:30 pm on Wednesday, the day they usually got out early and went to Mrs. Frank's for what they called "playtime" before Monica got home from work. But Shelly Frank said they never arrived off the bus, and the Principal said they didn't arrive at school that morning, and Monica's husband, Max was notified. "That bastard," thought Monica. After 3 years of being absent, Max was still a contact for emergencies...
A dapper man bent down and picked up a penny off the cobblestone walkway. A young girl gasped softly as she ducked into a nearby alley. She watched in suspence as the man turned the penny over and over in his hands. That was all the money that her mother had given her for the day and she had been instructed to take it to the baker's shop that afternoon. If she was short by even one penny by the time she reached her shop, she would not have enough to buy any food. The man paused for a moment...
You can hide me here, in my pretty things. I will not stir to fight the malaise.
However did you want me, strong? To have your cake and eat it, too?
I was just dreaming of the outside world, of a dream outside this dream. Of colors that are vivid and real. Of people you can reach out and touch. Of rain that falls onto your skin. Of dirt that makes you truly dirty.
And you, you were just telling me stories. Stories of the people you saved during your travels. How you shared a space with a teenage mother...
"You stink," said Martin.
"I do?" said Candice.
"Yes. You smell like eggs and old V8 and goose turds and a garbage dump and Count Chocula."
"Oh," said Candice. "Maybe I've been eating too much garlic."
"Here," said Martin, pulling out the garden hose. "I will shower you."
On went the hose. Candice was soaked. She shrieked. The water soaked her wedding dress, the white leather couch, the white carpet, and her two Corgis - Bill and Lem.
"Now I'm all wet," said Candice, peeling off her dress. She was now naked on the couch.
Martin stuck his nose in...