I let out a heavy sigh as I stepped over the cobwebs, allowing myself to have a moment of preparation. The swing rocked softly in the wind, beckoning me closer to its creaking gears. A piece of fabric rustled, caught in the links of the toy. I rushed towards it, snatching the piece of fabric from the wind, as it threatened to engulf it. The only piece of evidence that Mary had been here.
I stalked home, allowing myself to breathe, as I saw the missing posters pasted on the wall. The evidence would never be found, they would never...
I stood in a Bollywood-style costume, obediently serving drinks to the guests at the Thomas' party tonight. It was a big one; "everyone who's anyone is here," in the words of Mrs. Thomas.
"A champagne, please," a man probably two years older than I said quietly. I looked up and saw piercing blue eyes and defined cheekbones - this guy was fine. Not like it'd ever matter, the Thomas' would never let their best teen servant date, but he was hot.
"Coming right up," I mumbled, seeming to have lost my confidence. I poured too much and spilled the extremely...
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...
Flying home on a plane always made the man feel the same way. Confronting the (insane, brilliant, necessary) idea of flying through the sky, unnatural (he was an animal after all), yet completely commonplace (everyone does it), consistently put the man in a nostalgic, wistful mood. He'd picture his wife sitting on the edge of the bed, the afternoon sun coming from the window, happy to see him. He'd think on his kids, the way they were; a mixture of exasperation and wonder. He'd think on work the next day.
Grateful. That's how it felt.
He'd cut planes in half....
"I'm in love with a robot."
"What?!"
"I am in love with a robot. I really am. I just realized it."
"I am concerned that you don't know what love is."
"Well - me too, but that's not the point. I am concerned that you don't know what robots are."
"What is a robot? Who is this robot that you "love?"
"A robot is someone who functions on the basis of identifiable algorithms or functions. It is someone who may appear human but is not. You."
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,...
I still washed his shirt. There was only his plaid shirt, because it was what he'd worn. But I still washed it. My son disappeared a few years ago. They found his body by the lake. He was wearing that old plaid shirt. The rest of his clothes I gave to my nephew, about his size. But that plaid short...I'd never give that to anyone. It was his, it was all I had left. The plaid shirt. His room was in perfect condition, but it didn't seem right. But his shirt in my soft-from-washing-so-many-dishes hands. It felt like everything was...
We speared our forks on the tablecloth stained with soy and spice and duck sauce as the waiters took the picked-over "Chinese" dinners from our sight. The restaurant catered to American tour groups whose beef and corn tastes fall too unrefined for authentic foreign dishes and who long to travel thousands of miles just to conjure a memory from the hole in the wall Taiwan Garden down the end of Mulberry Street, across from the courthouse.
As our servants sprinkled the remains of our feast in the dumpster like fish food to the swarm of street children eager for their...
So, maybe she wasn't what a guy wanted in a girlfriend. She was loud, and rowdy. Always speaking her mind, blunt to a fault.
She didn't know what guys wanted, They just didn't want her.
21 years old and not one date, not even a first kiss. "Failure." She breathed.
"Did you say something, Charlotte?" Her mother asked, she shook her head.
"Nope." She continued to look out the window as her mother drove down the highway.
What was wrong with her, she didn't feel ugly. and she liked her sense of humor, but then why was she so invisible...
Immoveable objects.
She'd presumed that they were just an illustrive device - the nemesis of the unstoppable force. It hadn't occurred to her that, actually, they did exist.
Why they existed in a forest was another matter entirely. It wasn't exactly clear (well, the object was, that was why she couldn't see it) why an immoveable object should want to be in a forest. Was there something about forests that made it such a rich environment, suited to objects that resisted force?
Walking around it didn't seem to be an option - immoveable and apparently large. Impossibly large. It was...