"can you get my squeaky toy for me?"
"OK. where is it?"
"under the couch"
"OK...geez Pancakes...how many toys can you fit under here?"
"i dunno how many are there?"
"Six!"
"well then...six i guess."
And thus began the story of Tall Guy and Zeke Andrew Pancakes.
It started out as a bit of a joke I suppose. I opened a Facebook account and a Twitter account for my dog Zeke. I posted semi-regular interactions between him and I, and much to my surprise everybody played along without even being asked. Everybody treats Zeke as a separate entity and never...
In the beginning, he tasted like rainwater: salty. Dried sweat around the rim of his mouth, a taste that clung to his mustache bristles like saltwater taffy.
In the beginning, he was rainwater, and I was a pool. Splashes hit the bottom. He said, you are a the ruin of mankind, rising to the tops of the trees. He said, you make me greedy to reach your destination like a home.
In the end, he tasted like a mountain top. Stretching high above the clouds to breathe a privileged cold. And I was a seed that could not grown on...
She began a cigarette.
She thought about the beginning, when both of them wrestled with being simultaneously addicted to and afraid of each other. The fear was its own pleasure: they both noticed that the adrenaline of their hours apart was worth infinite foreplay.
She watched the first part of the logo turn orange and then grey. The image lasted in the ash for a second before mixing in with the image of the paper.
Later, she began to notice a strange emotional trajectory in their evenings together: the impulse, the sex, and then sadness, or disappointment. The sweat turned...
Dust obscured the dim lighting above. Clutching a paper bag, the girl lurched to the elevator. Old, worn doors opened, and she descended.
Outside the building her suitor waited wearing a tattered tweed jacket and chipped bifocals. In his hand, a pair of freshly cut daffodils.
The storm had blown over, but not before it had blown over his ship, along with all of his crew. The captain always went down with the ship, but by the time he woke up from a plank smacking him upside the head, he found himself drifting alone on a plank of wood in the middle of the ocean, no one else in sight. Too late to sacrifice himself to the sea gods now.
As he drifted, he knew shore was near. There were too many birds flying about for it not to be. He just had to hope the...
Deluxe. I ordered a deluxe meal. Where, you might be wondering? Not McDonalds. Not BK. Not Whataburger. Not Chick-fil-a. No, I was trying a new restauranut down on 57th street, you know, in the bad part of town. Normally, I don't venture out that way to often. However, my favorite comic book store recently located to 55th street, just two streets over from this new place. So, after I bouight the newest copies of Batman, X-Men, and Green Martians From Outer Space, I went over to the new restauranut. It was called "Tom's Eatery". "Hmmm....", I thought to myself, "Thsi...
There was this mouse, see, and her name was Dot. Dot the mouse. Anyway, Dot had a son whose name was Dwight. Dwight was hungry all the time because the only thing he would eat was Egg Foo Yung from the Golden Chopsticks restaurant in downtown Buffalo. Problem was Dot, Dwight, and the owner of the house, Helen Quartermain, lived in Detroit.
So Dot was pigging out on cheese and rice that Helen Quartermain had left on the floor. Dwight wouldn't touch it. So Dot goes up to Helen and says: "Yo, HQ. My baby's starvin and you better pick...
There was blood on my pillow. A lot of blood. A ton of blood. Where did it come from? It seemed to be dripping from somewhere. I looked up. The celing was dry. I looked around, I felt my own face, hair, ears, nose...all dry. What the h*ll was going on? Then, I heard something. A step. Two steps. Steps moving across the wood floor near the staircase downstairs. Was this the source of the blood? Was it the cause of the blood? Am I next? I was not injured, but I was still terrifyed. Suddenly, something came bounding around...
It landed in 1966. The voyages of the Starship Enterprise would enthrall fans of Star Trek for three years before finally being cancelled. Years later, a movie franchise would be born, as well as subsequent televisions hows. There were comics, novels, and Star Trek fan conventions. The words "Trekkie" and "Trekker" entered the lexicon.
It landed in 1966. He landed in 1966. The Great Bird of the Galaxy, Gene Roddenberry, landed his series on our television screens for the first time and the world would never be the same again.
She could listen all day. The raspy, melancholy vocals of the demo tape was not without flaws, but in this moment, perfectly delectable. Her own voice was breathtaking to her; after all, how often did she experience a conversational sing-a-long with herself? The sound was a breath of fresh air, nothing she inhale here, in the muggy city, at her perfunctory job, or with her otherwise dull life.
This was the sound of butterflies.