Circus time and the big top was humming with activity. Punters were arriving and children were shrieking for ice cream. The trapeze artists were warming up and I was standing holding one of the rope ladders steady as the Frazelli Family (Fantastical Flyers) were assuming their positions on the high wire.
Suddenly, there was a shriek from Bobobono, one of our clowns (not a very funny one if you ask me, but then I have never liked clowns).
"A child has fallen in the river."
At the bottom of the muddy field where we were camped, there ran a river....
"Wait, let me send a pic...." Darren closed one eye as he aimed his phone and snapped a picture, capturing the female figure in three quarter view, just before the turning stage she stood on spun her slowly away.
He gazed at the picture, ran his thumb over the screen, before attaching it to the a text and sending it. The female figure had turned back around and he gnawed on his lips as he briefly met eyes with her. They were glossier than one would be used to, the whites would glitter, something in the plastic, or enamel or...
There was blood on my pillow and when I woke up the right side of my mouth was swollen and swore. I rushed to the bathroom and rinsed the dried blood from my mouth. It came out in thick clumps at first, and then ran quickly as the crimson liquid. I pulled my cheeks wide and saw that three teeth were missing.
I ran back to my room, my jaw aching and throbbing with the intensity of a fire alarm. I lifted the blood stained pillow and saw three dollar bills lying there. They were crumpled and crimped but someone...
The gate closed behind them. No one knew what was in store for them. There was a collective sigh as people resignedly turned their heads this way and that, trying to get their bearings. All the panic and fear and questions had been exhausted on the two hour train ride to this place. Sam wasn't sure what "this place" was but he knew it was no good. He heard chains being wound on the outside of the door. Definitely no good. He heard a padlock click into place.
They'd all been rounded up the night before. Some snatched from beds,...
"Travel light, but take everything with you."
That was all the hastily scribbled note said. Now here I was, driving down the back roads of southeast Georgia, my eyes constantly darting to the rearview mirror, knowing someone - anyone - could be trailing me. What the hell had Erick gotten us into now? I wondered as I drove quickly, dust kicked up behind me as I sped toward the cabin. It was our agreed-upon meeting place in case trouble showed up.
My hands gripped the wheel tighter. Dammit! I swore to myself. I was happy, going to be married in...
There was a little girl who loved a boy. It was her first time with a crush on a boy. It was her first time with love. This little girl was my sister, so I tried to explain to her that she was too young to love. She wouldn't listen. She loved her "boyfriend" too much.
One day, I took her to preschool. She ran over to a boy tried to give him a hug and a kiss. He pushed her to the ground. "Don't talk to me, you Wussy Wimp!" he shouted.
I ran over to her to help...
She wasn't the kind of girl who kept love letters, wrapped in pink ribbon, locked in an inlayed wooden box. Not that anyone sent love letters these days.
She would have no wild stories of her youth to tell her neices, no lost loves, no ones who got away.
She was, as she always had been, just her.
She had got so use to being on her own, the proverbial independant woman, that she ended up so afraid, afraid of being any other way.
And so , even though she was still young, she had stopped looking for love letters...
The conversation lasted two words. I survived.
That's what I usually told my girlfriends when they decided to end it with me after trying to deal with my post traumatic stress disorder. Those that began in 'rescuer mode' soon realised I was too much for them. The others that either were in lust with me or maybe after my money decided they would put up with anything if it was worth their while. But they all gave up in the end.
The recurring nightmare felt so real. Long empty corridor, bare walls and concrete floor. I saw him approach, tall,...
He grimaced as the flash went off, realizing too late that the final extant image of himself would so clearly portray the unease he was feeling at that moment. All well, he thought -- better that way.
On the one-off cedar deck table he had placed his remaining possessions. The cool glass beneath had the strange optical effect of making them seem blurred, though he knew his exhaustion was catching up with him.
"Ok, what do we do now?" he said to himself. Another sign, he chuckled, that things were going terribly.
He grabbed his smart phone first, and, unsurprised...
Once upon a time there was little man whom no-one believed. His name was Henry, and he loved to go to parties. But when he said he would go, no-one thought he would turn up. And sometimes he didn't believe himself that he would go to the party. One day there was a fancy-dress party at the house of his cousin, the Lady Esmerelda Wallop-Smythe. "I'll be there!" Henry said. "Yeah, in a cocked hat!" said the Lady Esmerelda. So when he arrived in his best britches and dress uniform, he found that he was the only one who had...