The results were in. The young men standing before the judges fidgeted anxiously in their military-style uniforms. James Cox, the eldest and team captain of Squad A, licked his lips nervously as he glanced over at his group's only rivals, Squad Z. They'd eliminated the twenty-four others between them through a mixture of deceit, strategy, and main strength.
"Team Captains Cox and Denmark, step forward," Vice-General Mark Harrelson said curtly. Instantly the two young men, both sixteen, moved the single step forward. "Team Z is this year's winner," Harrelson said in a flat voice.
James had an instant of remorse...
She had already been waiting for half an hour, her foot tap tap tapping its heel against the cold tiles. A quick glance up at the clock on the wall – an old, crotchety thing which spurted into life once every creaking minute – tells her nothing beyond the fact that she's more nervous mow that the last time she looked. He was supposed to be here; him, with his knowing smile and faux-nervous laugh. A small case sat by her side; it was battered and scuffed in only the way something truly loved can be, something that has been carried and...
Dear one,
Well, I finally made it, I'm in Spain staring out over Santiago de compostella, i always ment to do this with you. I know you know that and as you can see its beautiful here. I wish the accident had never happened i could feel you holding my hand the whole way i swear it. i could hear you whisper at night and damn it if i thought this would help me i longed for you every night i slept in your bag i could smell you. hear your voice in my ear. Damn it! Why did you...
The Moon would never be the same again. I don't know what happened. It's my job to research and study the Moon, but not even I can explain why the Moon was bright pink in the sky. All we saw was a flash and all we heard was a huge loud ZAP! A laser beam of some sort hit the Moon and now it's pink. The rest of my team of researchers and I can't explain it. It's just pink. It's probably the guy who shrunk the Moon. It would make sense. But what kind of science can make the...
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...
When I crossed the street, my mind was rapidly flashing with the dreadful information. I sprinted to the bus stop, and scowled, to find the bench, filthy, and obviously occupied by a sleeping homeless man. When the bus came, I boarded, along with a woman that had just walked by, her high heels clattering on the pavement. I observed the driver, as I always do, sitting in the front, and deciding if he has a criminal background or not. If he does, I'll get off at Washington, the next stop. I tapped my feet on the floor of the bus,...
The lamp wouldn't turn on. She must have damaged it when she fell and she kicked the small wooden table it rested on in frustration. "Damnit!" she whispered to the empty room. "Damn, damn, damn!" Then she felt ridiculous. Imagine throwing a tantrum like that when she had other things to do, such as search the room, find the treasure, get out with all her bodily organs in tact... That sort of thing.
Not daring to switch on the main light and not able to use the lamp, she pulled her lighter from her pocket and flicked it on. There...
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...
I have a reputation.
The type of reputation that, when I walk into a room, people smirk or have that flash in their eyes that clearly says "I know what you did last night".
I have a reputation. I'm not that proud of this reputation, I mean, I wouldn't advise the me of the past to do it all over again. But I did do it. I did take that guy up to my room, and I did agree to go on a drive with that guy, and I did let that guy pick me up from work even though...
It's bad enough that I spent 500 bucks on the phone, but now I've waited for months on end to get the latest software upgrade. It's become an obsession of mine; I bang the refresh button on blogs, Twitter, Facebook. I scour the internet and Google news for any shred, a tiny iota of new insight into why a multi-billion dollar corporation can't seem to release a timely software upgrade. To make matters worse, amateur phone enthusiasts have been able to release more in their spare time than the actual "professionals" who, as far as I know, are being paid...