The lamp wouldn't turn on. That was really the least of his problems. It meant the electricity had finally been turned off. So had the water, the cable, and the gas. At least they had waited until the spring. It was warm enough to not risk freezing that night.
Jacob wondered through his house, filled with useless possessions. He touched the television and the fridge as he walked by them, exiting the house and into the beautiful April morning.
The birds were chirping and a steady drone of cars racing down the highway filled his ears. He took a deep...
He exited the train at Buenos Aires, and was glad to leave the station with its oppressive heat and even worse humidity. He eagerly sought fresh air, but was disappointed; the air conditioning in the station might have been primitive, but it was better than the heat of the blazing sun.
Despite his best efforts, he shivered uncontrollably. "I need a damn drink!" he muttered, and turned in search of a bar. He entered the first one he came to, and slumped at a table, calling for a beer, which the bar tender brought to him reluctantly, though his attitude...
Fate always gets the last laugh.
You expect one thing, another happens. You predict a storm, there's not a cloud in the sky. You bet on red, the ball lands on black.
Or worse, double-zero. Salt in the wound.
I hated it. Predictions, prognostications, fortunes even, for those inclined to call it that... they're supposed to be real. I always believed in that little bit of the supernatural, some little psionic impulse, letting you see fate, visualize fate, and perhaps even manipulate fate.
Only I could never get it right. Nothing ever rang true, even when I deliberately predicted the...
all alone. all alone forever. all by myself. I am the last left of my family. the last splotch of colour in the green. the last of my kind the others say. I should just drown myself in the lake. I swim to the bottom and wait for the darkness to overtake me. but then i remember i am a fish, i can't drown. I have an idea. I swim to the surface and leap out of the water. The seagull takes me in its mouth and swallows. Now the darkness comes. Now I am dead.
Elaine stopped dead in her tracks. She had just fixed the bulb this morning, it couldn't already be...
The sound of the back screen door swinging stopped her heart. A wave of panic went through her and she just knew she wasn't alone anymore. But maybe they (or he, or she) had just left. Except she didn't hear any footsteps.
Her bedroom door was locked. The handle jiggled, then a voice; "Larry it's friggin' locked!" "Fuck," Joe yelled. "It fuckin' can't be locked!"
Elaine started turning around; her cell phone was in her car in the driveway.
The kitchen light...
I shot my butler. He was really making me mad. You see, I had told him several times to stop buring mt toast in the morning. He also had a nasty habit or overvooking my eggs. Nothing worse than overcooked eggs. Well, so you see, I had to shoot him. But he didn't die, which kind of made things worse for me. I only grazed his elbow. I knocked some bone chips off and not much else. He didn't even tell anyone it was me! he made up some story about slipping on some water on the floor of the...
The darn woodchuck was bothering me. He was a smart woodchuck. He had a bucket of red paint, which he was using to paint the golf course. "Ha ha ha," laughed the woodchuck. "I am painting this blade of grass right now. Watch as my paintbrush, which is laden in red paint, strokes the blade. See? It is red now. Ahahahaha!!!!!"
I was having none of it. I do not like the golf courses to be red, especially the green, which is called a green for a reason. You don't call them red or blues or yellows, do you? No....
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...
There is nothing good about Monday. I feel bad every time I think that, because then I realize, "Well, I could be dead, or in Cleveland, and then my Monday would be much worse." And then I feel bad for making fun of Cleveland in my head, because I actually liked it the one time I went there.
Even though I don't do much here, it's hard to escape the native smugness that comes with being from New York City. It is all going on here. The thing is, I don't want to do most of it. I'm pretty internal,...
Jane lay on the couch coughing. She hated being sick.
"Someday," she thought to herself, "I will be immortal, and I will never be sick again." But that day would not arrive for a very, very long time. Not with Safura around.
Safura. Jane's blood boiled in anger at the thought of her nemesis. Her anger made her cough again.
It was Safura who had taken Jane's medicine, Safura who had plunged Jane into this twilight of never-ending sickness. Jane had been so close - SO CLOSE! - to gaining immortality in the weeks before her diagnosis.
She took a...