Goodnight sweetheart, well it's time to go...
Goodnight sweetheart, well it's time to go...
There's a contentment there. I find myself humming that, especially when everything has gone to hell and the day is a loss, and yet there is still the final evening bits to get through.
It's Sha-NA-NA in my head. A sense of contentment settles over me, a sense of belonging - to another time, a younger time - a time before pain. Well. A time before this particular kind of pain, or even the pain of what was coming a few years after that song stopped...
I have wanted him since the first time I saw him on the screen. He wasn't my type, but he drew me in anyway. Classic good looks mingled with eccentric behavior to form this beautiful creature. His voice on the radio spoke to me intimately. His words dissipated into a fantasy, he said only the things I wanted to hear. I hear him say, "I've been hoping you would notice me like I noticed you." Oh, and I have. I have and I want. That he could see me how I see him. That he could know me and love...
"If you weren't strumming that chord over and over, I might think you were asleep," said Howard.
"Yeah, you might be forgiven for thinking that," replied Memmy. "No, I just rest my head on the body of the guitar. Here. Like this." Memmy's head didn't move. It was already on the body of the guitar.
"Don't you guys play electic guitars," asked Howard.
Memmy didn't look up. "Not when we're depressed. Hey, hand me that bottle, would you?"
"Which bottle?" asked Howard.
"The one that's not empty," said Memmy. He still hadn't looked up.
Howard shook several in sequence. One...
In the time of stone and wood, when you and I walked through shady forests surrounded by the scent of roasting ptarmigan and flint-struck fire, we loved the world and all it contained.
In the time of iron and silk, when you and I rode through across the land surrounded by the scent of rotting bison and coal smoke, we possessed the world and all it contained.
In the time of silicon and glass, when you and I flew through the sky surrounded by the scent of soymeal and ozone, we eschewed the world and all it contained.
Now, in...
He didn't know that yesterday was the last day he would see her. He had no doubts about the marriage, but he knew that his life would change in a way he wasn't sure he was ready for. He couldn't live without her; he knew that. He couldn't go a day without hearing her laugh or seeing her smile-her smile that made her eyes twinkle and her dimples flash. He thought about how much he loved her smell. Whether it was the smell of her herbal shampoo, the smell of her sweet sweat after she got back from running, the...
An aura surrounded her.
He couldn't describe it, couldn't explain it, couldn't put it into words. It was beauty.
She raised her hands, opened her mouth, flexed her diaphragm, and completely, irrevocably drew him into herself.
Her song permeated him, and the light that bounced off of her transformed his eyes into bodiless, empty receptors: everything else faded, his body, his chair, his table. There was only the Vision.
Then the song ended, and he was left floating in the smooth, absent, come-down buzz of the empty amplifiers.
Charles didn't know what to think. The heat on his cheeks hurt too much, but he didn't like it when the flame disappeared. Jenny was the one holding the camera. She told him that they could all share the candle. It was one flame for the entire group. A moppet party, dad called it, because it was not their birthday.
Mom was sick. Charles could only think of that. She'd pale cheeks and skin stretched over her face, and her hair tangled and black and her mouth a gaping, gawping hole. She didn't even recognize any of them when they'd...
Whap! It him like a .... what? Whap! It did it again... that thing inside his head. He'd forgotten to take his meds... oh, many days gone by. The doctors had warned him when left the ward... Whap! It felt like... God, he couldn't have described it if he'd wanted to. He'd loved his mother.. when she was alive. Being dead didn't help his issues... his mother, not him, that is. The ward had been locked, the drugs forced on him.
Whap!
He'd promised the doctors he'd take them when he got out.
What!
He'd instead torn them up and...
He sat in the truck parked on the gravel drive, his arm hanging out the window, a cigarette dangling from his finger. The radio was on and Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses was blaring.
She watched him from the behind the closed screen door.
He lowered the visor so she wouldn't be able to see his reddened eyes. Def Lepard's Pour Some Sugar On Me came on next, and he tweaked the volume nob. He could tell she was still looking at him.
He finished his cigarette and flicked it out the window. He took a long drink from the...
Midnight
On the roof.
A shouldn't-be time in a shouldn't-be place,
Thad pecked a shouldn't-do cigarette from the packet and lit it with a burst of flame that violated the darkness and fizzed against the silence.
He exhaled a plume of smoke, pushing it away from his body with his breath, but it hung about in his personal space as if it was reluctant to go too close to the edge.
He looked up. Some mist up there was blocking out the stars and, for now, the moon was balling along behind a strip of cloud. There wouldn't even be...