The giant surveyed the landscape, wondering where all the people were. Truth was, he didn't know he was a giant. Everyone else he had ever come in contact with was a giant, so humans - the little people he had no knowledge of - didn't exist in his mind. Yes, he saw them, but they were nothing but insignificant little insects, ants, only there to annoy and crush.
He marveled at this world, so green and rocky, so unlike the limitless cloudy floors of his huge domain. He reached down and picked a few blades of grass, and at once...
Idyllic farmhouse? Well, appearances can be deceiving, I suppose. If the For Sale sign in front had said, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," we might have been more wary. As things stood,, when we signed on the dotted line we had no idea what we were really buying into... or signing away. The funny thing about souls, you don't really notice them until they're gone.
I was free. This is where I had always felt free. The air rushed up beside and around me in the form of small, rounded bubbles. I plunged deeper and deeper, holding my breath until I could feel my lungs begin to scream. The whistling noise in my ear told me I needed to go to the surface. I close my eyes as I kicked my feet, pushed my arms through the water like propellers, feeling the rush of water around me. My head cracked through the surface of the water and I gasped, gulping down as much air as...
The year was 1986. My home, a typical home in Suburbia, USA. My life, a typical American teenager, filled with angst and dissatisfaction at my lot in life. Little did I realize how that life would soon change.
The summer of my sixteenth year was hot and humid, as most summers were in sunny Florida. My car was an old Chevy with the cloth interior roof held up by thumbtacks, the best I could afford on the money I saved working nights after school at the local movie theatre. Weekends I'd drive to my boyfriend's house, past the streetwalkers trying...
I couldn't sleep with her next to me. I knew what she had done. It was despicable; it made my stomach churn. But there she was, next to me, sleeping soundly, like a baby without a care in the world. Her breathing came in short shallow gasps. Her snores got on my nerves and as I try to sleep all I can think of is what she's done. What I've done, now that I know. I'm part of it. A romantic evening, a shared bottle of Merlot, shared secrets; too much. A night of passion, a night of disgust. Now...
"What's that you say?" the captain growled into his phone, "Pirates, in our neighborhood?"
He called out to his men, "Raise the flag! Ready your weapons! If they want to be pirates, they can prepare for battle."
The men went about their business, but the usual bounce to their steps were gone. Their captain had spent a wee bit too much time watching Peter Pan as a lad, and they were paying for it
.
"What weapons would you have us use, cap?" asked one soldier.
"We have no cannons and no plank, are you crazy?" muttered another soldier.
The...
1943. The year of my birth. To a very young mother. Raped by a stranger. I spent forty years believing that Tom Morran was my real father. When I found out the truth (by accident) I had a breakdown which took me by total surprise as I had always been an unemotional, logical man. Cold, is what my wife called me. A cold fish. No empathy, no sentiment or sympathy. Even when our youngest was miscarried after a car accident I didn't shed a tear.
Divorce was not something my wife contemplated after her short stay in hospital but I...
I don't understand why it's so hard to lose weight. I know what I'm doing wrong but can't stop. Multi bags of potato chips, carrot cake with creamy frosting, sedentary lifestyle. I used to be such an active man, always playing some kind of sports, walking at least two hours daily as I hated driving in bad traffic to work. It's not as though I have a void to fill, like many other overweight people. I am happy.
So why on earth can't I change???
Martha, my slim wife doesn't even mind my protruding belly (or at least that's the...
Private Morlane glanced at the watch that he'd taken off and left on the small table by his cot, rubbing his sleep-weary eyes as he noticed what time it was. Fifteen minutes until dawn, or at least until when dawn was slated to be, according to all of the records that he had read over the last few mornings.
The last few mornings had been early ones. They were camped next to a large farm, with a broken-down wooden fence surrounding the grounds, where a large rooster loved to perch at sunrise and crow so loudly that every living thing...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room.
Well, "standing" may be the wrong word. There's someone IN the corner of my room. The lights are off; only moonshine streaming through the window above my bed gives shape to the darkness there. It's bulky; that much I know. It's BIG, bigger than me. The size of its shadow dwarfs my small frame, or would anyway, if I dared move from beneath the covers of my linen sheets.
Feet tucked safely in, the monsters under my bed can't get me, but if I move the alien - for surely that's...