Not everyone knows this, but Kate Beaton is obsessive, the painterly equivalent of a Method actor. To create each new page of "Hark, a vagrant!" she recruits Swiss artists' models to dress in period clothing and pose in front of the Alps. Frozen in position as well as in time, they are required to make only the most ridiculous of faces for her art to take fruition. Eyes are stressed. At least half of the models have held a spot in Guiness for eye-bugging capability.
Once their minds are relaxed after a sufficient period of standing still, they are required...
As per usual, our conversation lasted two words:
"Hey"
"Hi"
And that was it for the rest of the day.
I can't explain it. It's not like we were friends or acquaintances, or even enemies although some might've described our relationship as such. We certainly had a bit of an obsession with one another, but whether it was in a negative or positive way (one can {and will} argue that obsession is never a positive thing) I can't be sure.
But everyday was the same; walk in, greet each other, and stare from the corners of our eyes.
It wasn't...
In hindsight, the solution was simple. But Tim hadn't thought that five minutes ago.
The boy pounded the keyboard furiously; letters, numbers and symbols flashing across the screen.
Dave peered over the other boys shoulder, tentatively.
"Are you sure you can do this?" he asked.
Tim ignored this comment. Of course he could do it. Yes, they would detect the hack in a matter of minutes, but he never doubted his ability to circumvent their security before then.
He began to type faster, his fingers a blur.
Dave stepped back, sweat beginning to bead his head. If they could get...
She opened the envelope and screamed. Then she opened the next envelope, screamed, set it down. Then the next, screamed, set it down. Next, screamed, down. Next, screamed, down.
A strange ritual. Letting out some kind of pent up anger and frustration. She had drawn a crowd, as one letter after another would be opened, followed by a scream, then the laying down of the envelope. For hours on end she did exactly the same thing. Open, scream, down. Soon, the crowd had grown quite large. The police arrived, and stood for a few minutes, watching this bizarre ritual. One...
The first day of school and he was already in a fight. Mark sighed as the three seventh graders approached him from three different directions. His electric blue eyes took in the boy in front of him, a lanky kid with a bulbous nose and mean eyes. Beside him, another boy stood with his arms crossed over his broad chest, a sneer on his face. And behind him, Mark knew, was the last boy, a slack-lipped teenager with dull, incurious eyes.
“Lunch money,” Skinny said, holding out his hand.
“No,” Mark replied coolly as he sat back in his black...
The world was so close to perfect, he hated having to point out the flaws to the designer. It was his least favorite part of the job; they always took it personally. Months to design each reality, thousands of hours of effort by the design teams, but it always came down to the lead designer to take responsibility for the deliverable.
Clients were, of course, unreasonable in their expectations of what kind of world they would live out the rest of their lives. They were clients, after all. The health and happiness of a hundred thousand subsequent generations would depend...
Today, I sat next to a bog of pond. Water was at the brim and shutters at the cold wind. the sky grew gray and the wind quickened from a breeze to gust of pure power. the trees started to bend and wave in ways unimaginable. A clap of thunder broke the sound of the wind. tThen it started to rain, big fat droplets of the stuff, Fell with such strenght it pound the pond to it's breaking point.
The daring were punished.
It seemed almost contradictory, but that was how They wanted it. Ever since the capital-t-They had taken over it, a systematic reduction of risk-taking had been put into place, until the daring were trained not to dare, the mavericks removed and replaced with the mundane.
My sister Joan had wanted to be a baker. You would think that was sufficiently uninteresting for Them, but you'd be wrong - I have no idea how They found out, but after a few bottles of wine at my house, she told me her dream of opening her own bakery....
Heavy midnight. The crawl of the planchette under our fingertips. The triptych was coming alive. One creature sprang from the painted panel. A beast, horned and elephantine, illuminated by the moon through the cellar window.
It spoke to us through the board:
“Extradimensional bovine dreamfeeders graze upon fronds that sprout from the heads of sleepers. These dreams—long, lush, iridescent fancies rooted in neuronic soil and flowering up into the night—are their food.
“The beasts lumber through a meadow of musing at night, their jaws drooling plasmic sludge, their snorts ruffling moppet heads from across the chasm of dimension. They pass...
A bathroom break. A broken TiVo. Who would have thought that in the two minutes that it takes to pee he would have tore the TiVo from the wall and promptly thrown it out the window. On the other hand, there would be no need to rush the bathroom breaks anymore.
A long sigh escaped my mouth as I suddenly realized that she saved me. Saved me from the meaningless drone that is the TV. All those sitcoms, so little value. And yet, I hated her. Hated that I would no longer be able to waste hours watching re-runs of...