Acid ate up the canvas, leaving the moonlit scene unrecognisable. No longer priceless, breathtaking, desirable. Now a screwed up mess, destined for the trash can, ruined beyond any hope of restoration. Mr. Slovenias the gallery owner cried for the first time in years that day.
Jack spent his first night in jail. Unrepentant. Glad he'd ruined the masterpiece. Certain in the knowledge his act would save humanity.
Betty, Jack's long suffering mother realised that for the first time in her life, she was relieved he was spending the night elsewhere. In fact, if she were really honest with herself, she...
It's night time tonight, but it's not dark. At least the places we go aren't dark. They are darker than the places that you might go in the day, but not as dark as the daylight places are now. We taxi-ed here, but now we're not sure if it's the right place. It feels right, the lighting is right, but there's no door. A man is walking his dog, and the dog is finding places other dogs have peed and peeing on top of them. It could be human pee the dog is covering, too - people with newspaper blankets...
She sat staring at the skin of her hands. Her eyes traced the many lines, imagining the skin to be the brown, scorched earth of deserts, thirsty for life.
The wrinkled skin gathered above her enlarged knuckles, reminding her of dried fruit.
She continued examining her hands, wondering how the finiteness of life had come to suddenly feel so tangible.
Her veins somehow looked foreign. Her age had caused her veins to become like strange, throbbing, river-like threads of yarn, sewn to her flesh, invading her hands.
She rubbed the underside of her index finger against the rough surface of...
Nothing about him is gentle or soft. I look at him, standing strong, trying to avoid the lure of muscles twitching under thick white cotton. I want to reach out and touch him, to feel skin on skin, but I can only wait.
Later, we are alone on a hilltop, and he is shirtless in the heat. I try to focus on the distant view, think of anything but the way my heart rate begins to increase. As he moves towards me, he has no idea of the feelings in my head.
Torturous almost.
Wars have spiralled from less passionate...
The waves crashed and slapped at the stones, slurping up mouthfuls of sand and dragging them back to the deep. Elk stood out on an outcropping, the letter held tight in his hands. He didn't need to read it again, had read it fifteen times already this morning. And besides that, he wasn't an idiot and knew what was happening..could see the signs pointing at the end.
The waves frothed and slapped at the sand and stones.
But a letter was for cowards. Dash a note and sneak out the back window and then move on with your life.
No...
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....
I am different.
I know it.
They know it.
They being society.
In our society, we are to dress the same, act the same, our names are the same, and the only thing different about us is our eyebrow angles. Strange, isn't it? I know there are a few like me in the world, but I don't know where. When I was very little, my parents lived on the edge. They would be different, and the society would scold them. When I was three, they were to be killed. Before my parents died, they decided they wanted me to stand...
They were trapped for seven days. Aleena tried to hold back the tears as it had been seven days since she had seen the wolf- warrior Felan being taken away by Balor. She felt that she had let everyone down: the people who had brought her up as their own. She wondered where they were; if they were still trapped in the cage that she had tried to rescue them from when she and Felan had been caught. She wished she could see them one more time, even if it was to say sorry for bringing them into this. They...
You get so used to one set of reality that you don't really consider that another one could exist.
Which is a very pretentious way of saying that feelings change without us even noticing it.
It's only when I'm reminded of the intensity of feeling that I notice that I am simply not feeling it anymore. What once felt like lifeline and lifeblood is now just a passing memory. A potentially entertaining thought process, but not worth obsessing over. Barely worth my time.
It's simultaneously comforting and distressing, to know that such intensity can be felt one moment but in...
A bubble of blood oozed around the tip as he held the blade on his thumb. The knife was unbalanced and sharp. There's a metaphor in there somewhere, he thought.
Hi. My name's Steel. Chinese Steel. I'm unbalanced and sharp. And dangerous. And cheap. And I'll probably break the first time you try to use me.
Bad metaphor, he thought. Or too good.
With a flick of his wrist, the blade bounced in the air, spinning awkwardly in a half-arc. It fell, jabbing into the ground in the middle of the circle of empty beer cans. Close enough to the...