I looked up at the cathedral door and I thought this is what it means, this is how it all culminates, in this big round arch towering above my head. It was like a mouth, opening wide to swallow me up and draw me down inside, to consume and digest me. Just like the church, I thought. This is what it does. Consumes me.
After I'd breached the threshold, the sounds of the war outside hushed and all I heard was the soft murmur of the others, deeper inside, the soft crying of lost and destroyed. Here's where we come,...
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...
to feel the moss of the forest floor - this was her favorite. she would bend down periodically, just to caress the soft verdant covering. when she came upon a cluster of burgeoning ferns, she reached and ran them through her fingers like she would strands of a lover's hair. she loved the forest quite as much, and found spending time in it much more peaceful than time passed with any lover she'd ever known. the sun-dappled ground. the falling leaves led in a gentle dance by the breezes. the sight of it all renewed her spirit, in the way...
When I was 12, I went to sea. When I was 12 and 1/16th, I knew it had been a terrible idea after all and swam for shore. Shore turned out to be not where I started. I ate monkey brains with a wooden spoon, I wore voluminous silk pants in a brighter blue than had ever been seen before in my hometown so far away, I stole. It was a fine adventure. When I arrived home, dusty and below the dust a crusty layer of salt, and below the crusty layer of salt my skin nut brown, I was...
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take. Which was strangely ironic, because he was notoriously indecisive about everything. But this time, it was a clear case that he needed to get out, run away, and with haste.
However, haste was yet another thing he did relatively badly, too.
But maybe it was because it had become too entertaining to leave. Yes, he was in constant peril, but verily, the actions of the mortals around him were entertaining to the last. Nowhere else could he find people willing to do such stupid inane activities like...
Dispossessed
All he had to his name was this park bench, and not even that.
As he sat and gazed off into the distance, he contemplated his fate. He'd lost his job, then his home, then his family. Nothing was left to him, not even his body that lay six feet under rotting in a pauper's grave. His spirit sat on the bench that the shelter had dedicated to his memory. Suicide had not ended his suffering. Dispossessed of everything he had held dear, he contemplated getting his life back.
His ex-wife stood looking at the bench, at his name...
Geraldine, I'm serious give me that back, I don't have time for this... Because it's mine. Give it back now. It's ringing. If you don't give it back to me as soon as I'm done on the phone I'm coming to take it.
Yeah. Hi. Can I order something? Ok, give me two butter chickens and two naan breads. Yes that's my address. No, no apartment. Cash. How long? Thanks.
Geraldine you give me that right now. Where did you go? You better not be reading that. I swear when I find you.I don't know why I'm even buying
Four minutes away from the burn point, one of the telltales switched from green to red. Tears streamed from my eyes, flowing back fast into my ears. The compression collar held my head in an unshakable grip. I flicked from gauge to gauge, moving only my eyes.
We were pulling seven Gs on the spinning turn, squeezing as much boost velocity as possible from the flyby. Apparently, the strain had been too much for the secondary backup fuel pump. The main primary pump and its backup were still reading green, and the main secondary was still green as well. The...
It came out of nowhere. A rock. A killer.
It was bigger than anything I'd ever seen since breaking orbit, but that wasn't saying much for a rookie like me. My console alerted me to the spinning asteroid and woke me from the warmest blanket of a dream. Of course, that's how it always happens, right?
I make my way up to the cockpit, though it's only on the other side of the thin partition of my shuttle. The Gen-Mark II was designed to hold four and that's how it was filled when we left dock last year. Now mine...
The new pope looked down on the moving heads, waving arms, heard the cacophany of sound, brass bands, singing in a multitude of tongues, watched the fluttering flags in the wind, saw the dark sky illuminated by millions of cell phone flashes as his followers took their shot of history. All around the world people watched tv, heard his first words, the blessing, the prayers, the gratitude.
I knew that it was a day most of them would never forget but gradually the magnificence of it would fade in the same way my memories faded of my father, the strong...