Lola, she was a dancer... something about flowers in her hair or was it her underwear? He couldn't actually remember the lyrics to the song or who sang it, but the melody pounded in his brain like a ballpeen hammer. What the hell was he going to do? Lola was a crappy name anyway. What the hell did it stand for? Lolita? Margola? Or some sort of anagram, or whatever the hell it was when you smushed the first letters of a bunch of words together for the sake of brevity. All he knew was that Lola, whatever it stood...
They were trapped for seven days, four storeys down, in a subway car.
Just the two of them.
Midfight, mid-breakup, mid-life-altering-altercation, the lights had flickered. Then gone out.
In the darkness Jake had offered a tentative "Hello?" and chuckled quietly.
Cooper had shouted back. At the moment they realized the darkness would not abate, that help would not come, that they were trapped, they'd retreated to opposite ends of the car.
Cooper flipped the emergency switch and forced open a door. A rotting stench flooded the car.
Doors shut again they studied the opposite end of the car.
On the...
I don't know what to say. The image was... IS astouding, but other than that, nothing. What do I see? A lonely figure on a windswept beach, but not one of sand, no, one of bright colors and soft, sculpted rocks. The ocean is so close, yet because the sky matches the color of the water, the sea seems to go on forever, endlessly rolling through the heavens, the white waves becoming clouds creasing the sky as they travel through the heavens. It's daytime, yet not as bright as you would expect. The clouds mask the sunlight, dimming it, not...
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs, their eyes reflecting the light like stars in the darkness. Not that anyone noticed. Not that anyone cared...
No one had while they lived, why should they care now? Now that they were as insubstantial as the breeze that leaked through the wooden boards that made up the house. No one knew where the breeze came from, only that it chilled them at odd times of the day and night. When it was especially windy outside, the skeletal trees would scrap against the house with gnarled limbs that stretched out like fingers. It...
It comes from fearing science.
In America of 2025, the faithful had won. No one believed in evolution. No one believed in vaccination. No one believed in soap.
The foreign countries had taken to calling them "Potatoes" because they were white under the thick film of dirt that comes from refusing to wash.
The potatoes were in a panic. Some potato, venturing beyond his or her front door, with a long lost telescope discovered in a storage room, had pointed it at the sky and seen something move. Watching further, the potato did a bit of empirical deduction and derived...
Simon had wanted some Crocs for ages. His mum resisted as she hated the sight of them, but she finally gave in when he pleaded for some for his birthday. He wore them day in, day out.
Footwear was always an issue in their house. They had to have so many pairs for school; outdoor shoes, trainers and plimsoles for PE, their parents found it a struggle to get them any shoes for outside of school. Having six children had it's benefits but it was a financial drain.
The end of the summer term neared.
"Have you got your trainers?"...
The bird landed, not with a bang but with a whimper.
Who would have thought that the poor little thing had so much to lose? She flew around the room, narrowly missing walls, windows, and draperies - but not the hands and heads of her human masters, must to their consternation.
Plop.
The whimper from the frustrated housewife echoed through the room, and she sighed as she put Pearlie-bird's favorite toy back in her cage. Then with one long glare at her feathered nemesis, she went to get a wet towel to save her favorite sweater.
Pearlie-bird, appeased, returned to...
Edgar watched the raven as the raven watching the moon. Silhouetted against the clouds, she was a beautiful sight: a black winged goddess caught within Diane's silvery glow. Little did he realize that the raven was taking orders, orders that Edgar himself would soon come to regret. The onyx bird turned predatory eyes upon the human that spied upon her, and he quickly closed the window, latching it from the inside.
Not that it would do him any good at all.
I was born inside a leather and land lace tomato breast. My father was a blues singer and my mother was a vegetarian prostitute. My toenails were always brittle, and my ribs aplenty. However, my vertebrae had a slight curvature, which lent itself to future sideways glances--both coming and going.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. It wasn't always rainy inside of my leather and lace tomato breast womb, but occasionally some foreign government, or Delta slide-playing red rooster would seed the environs of my leather and lace tomato breast womb. Seeding has been outlawed m]for military use by...
The sky was blue, the grass was green and the little clouds were as fluffy as the picture in a child's reading book. All was well with the world. And on her swing, she could see above the park, above the neat hedges and the flowering bushes. She could, as she swung higher still, see over the row of terraced houses and into the street beyond. Over the flowering cherry trees and the neat gardens with their blossoming plants, over the heads of the middle class and middle aged gardeners and housewives and shoppers and busy bodies of the suburban...