The first time I ever saw Eve, she was laying down on a blue picnic blanket that convered a smooth cement floor. She was holding a bundle of pink and purple balloons resting her head on a bright polka-dotted pillow and staring up at the clear blue sky. Her image printed itself onto my heart. I walked up to talk to her and looked down and her dark brown eyes looking up at me. I asked her what she was doing. She took such a long time to answer my question that I was afraid I'd offended her.
When she...
I woke up in the middle of the night to be covered in sweat. I sat up and looked around my room to find nothing. I slouched back down and began to think of what I had just witnessed. I sat back up and looked around my room again. I got up and walked into the kitchen to grab a cup of water. I filled the water to the to of the glass and chugged it all down. I walked back to my room and stopped at my door. I looked into the hallway and spotted her room. I walked...
The Moon would never be the same again. Not after the things I saw, the things I knew that were hiding there. I could never again look up at night without a shudder, without averting my eyes from the horror of it.
The Moon's sickly light, reflected sunlight turned mocking and wrong, crept in through my shuttered windows. I had taken to taping them up, afraid to go out at night, afraid of what might be there.
They walked down on moonbeams, those horrible things with too many angles, walked down and fed. I remember the first time I saw...
He pushed open the thin metal handle on the fingerprint-streaked glass door and the din of the bowling alley got cranked. What the fuck was he doing here? Three or four pieces of jailbait giggled past in a rush and he tried to avoid looking.
Mallory was always late, he thought. Couldn't get ready to go out without at least one girlfriend to help. It was almost pathetic if it wasn't true that she was way, way, way the hell better at being social than he was. Why else would he be at a fucking bowling alley on a Friday...
The year was 1986 and Prince had just released his second motion picture, Under the Cherry Moon. It was a black and white movie and Prince spent much of it singing cool songs like KISS and GIRLS AND BOYS. He played a character named Christopher Tracy.
This is one thing that happened in 1986.
Other things that happened in 1986:
- A little girl in Columbus, Ohio walked down to neighbourhood 7-Eleven and bought a bag of Doritos.
- Some kid somewhere bought an old Chewbacca action figure for 10 cents at a garage sale.
- Only three e-mails were...
The children were not at school. They had better, bolder, brighter things to be doing. The teachers didn't notice. They never did.
They ran out while at break, amidst the confusion of supposed bruises and teases and stolen lunches. The gates were easy enough to get past. Each girl's hair was neatly done up with a hairpin, after all.
The sky was bluer once they got out, it seemed. So they ran, ran hard, ran free, ran wild. They quickly enough leaped through the confines of urbanity and into spaces never explored before, wild forests filled with strange creatures. Each...
Da dum de dum, normal day- HOLY SH*T I'M FLOATING. WHAT THE HECK. I'M FLOATING. WAIT A MINUTE HOLD IT IS THAT A PINEAPPLE. WHY IS THERE A PINEAPPLE- oh hey Jenny. Guess what? WE'RE FLOATING. WE ARE FLOATING IN THE SKY. I AM SO CONFUSED. WHY ARE WE FLOATING. AND WHY ARE THERE RANDOM ALARM CLOCKS. THAT ARE ALSO FLOATING. I AM FLOATING. WE ARE ALL FLOATING. WHAT THE HECK.
"And they thought that was porn?"
"I don't think they would have called it that. Erotica, maybe. But...yes. There's something so innocent about it, isn't there? I love the kimono on this lady here."
"I can't believe you're looking at the kimino."
"This isn't your late-night shocker, this isn't your gorey pop-up nonsense. This is - I suppose it isn't classy as such, but it's... There's something about it. It's old fashioned. Charming in its way."
"They had very different ideas then."
"The world wasn't sexualised, I suppose. Seeing half a naked woman was shocking enough. We're just looking for...
"Goodnight, don't let the bedbugs bite," her mother said, tucking her in tightly.
"Bedbugs?," Julia asked, her voice trembling.
Her mother said not to worry, it was just an expression.
"Besides," her mother continued, "our house is much too clean to have bedbugs. So no need to worry about them."
"Shouldn't we maybe vaccuum the mattress first, just to be sure, Julia said, kicking at the heavy down comforter.
Her mother lay a hand against her forehead and brushed the hair back from Julia's eyes. She sat down on the bed.
"You just want to stay up and watch television,"...
"Big wheels keep on turnin'..." Paul's hands beat on the steering wheel in time with Lynyrd Skynrd as he drove down the highway toward town. "....A Southern Man don't need him around anyhow!" he sang loudly, dancing in the driver's seat. His dark eyes shone with glee as the music pumped him up. Soon, Paul reached his destination and turned into the parking lot, waiting for the song to end.
Finally, the music stopped and Paul pulled the key from the ignition. Gradually, his heart beat returned to normal and he straightened his red tie and white Polo shirt and...