It felt like the last night on earth, the last day of the world.
The truth of it was simply that it was the last day for the two of them.
She wasn't certain she could really pinpoint the day they ended, nor that she could really work out why they ended. It was as if she'd woken up one morning, looked at him (his back, how long had that been the way they slept, not even touching, two bodies in the same bed, not two souls in the same space) and realised that she didn't love him.
It hadn't...
I have always been a walker. Not a wanderer - that is what I sometimes hear them calling me now. No, I have always been a hiker. Someone who flings a rucksack on their back and dons big boots - leather ones are best, although you do have to work hard to keep them soft and supple. Dubbin is the answer. I used to have some once. Wonder what I did with it. Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes. I have always been a walker and, believe me, I've done some of the hardest and most challenging walks in the...
There was a little girl who loved a boy. It was her first time with a crush on a boy. It was her first time with love. This little girl was my sister, so I tried to explain to her that she was too young to love. She wouldn't listen. She loved her "boyfriend" too much.
One day, I took her to preschool. She ran over to a boy tried to give him a hug and a kiss. He pushed her to the ground. "Don't talk to me, you Wussy Wimp!" he shouted.
I ran over to her to help...
I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead. I knew that this was going to happen. In fact, I knew for three years that today, on my birthday, I was going to die. I didn't really believe it at first but as the day got closer I understood everything.
This whole thing started back three years ago. I had just turned thirteen and I wanted to start earning myself some money. After all, my parents wouldn't pay for everything I wanted anymore. The only job...
Waves. The sound was the first thing she noticed. She had to be somewhere near the ocean. She took a moment to register her immediate situation. Her right hand grasped a jutting piece of rock, and her left held tight to a thick branch that had somehow taken root in the cliff face. Her feet rested on a narrow ledge of rock that was no more than a few inches. She was thankful for her small feet, which her mother used to say were her best attribute.
She had to be at least 20 feet up. The ocean was too...
In 1921, he flew from the Great Rift Valley to the California shore
In 1934, he was spotted near a bank robbery that had gone bad
In 1937, he was in Acapulco, Mexico working the bar at the El Luna Hotel
In 1942, he was in love but it wasn't mutual
In 1953, he discovered the secret of anti gravity
In 1963, he made his first suicide attempt (pills)
In 1967, he bought a grocery store in El Segundo
In 1971, he became tired and bored
In 1974, he wrote that song - the one she loved
There were times like that, where even if it was something relatively mundane, he could stare long and hard at it and still have no clue what it was. Sometimes it worried him. One, it meant his vision was probably steadily worsening. Two, that he would imagine up something else in the place of an everyday object did not bode well for arguing his sanity. On the other hand, he could just say that meant he was ten-fold more creative than the average person.
A lot of the times he managed to draw up something quite unsettling though, and it...
"Oh, do come for dinner!" she purred. "Is there anything you don't eat?"
"Well ... quite a few things," he said. "I hate to be awkward, but I don't eat cars ... dustbin lids, flower pots, hurricane lamps ... old rope ... generally anything in the mineral category. Although I do drink mineral water, of course," he added.
"I was thinking, anything in the more animal or vegetable category?" she laughed.
"Oh, um ... rhinoceros, lion ... elephant ... panda, any protected species, I suppose, on ethical grounds, of course," he said.
"So anything within reason ..." she began.
"People,"...
2070. Man enters final stages of the information age! The shortest technological age of human history. With the global bandwidth of each home computer reaching a collective average of 1GB per-second, cell phones capable of literally recording an entire persons life, from womb-to-tomb, and neural implants giving humans longevity and superior thinking processes. The information age, though a short yet potent time, is nearing it's end. Soon we will be entering the space age. With the completion of the atmospheric tower, which will eliminate the need for rocket propulsion in order to leave our beautiful planet.
She didn't look at him; she looked past him, half closing her eyes as if basking in the sunlight. She was really trying to cut him from her vision altogether, the better to scry into the future he was pulling them towards. This had been his idea, his romantic idea: "Let's hire one of those rowing boats and take it down the river."
The top of his head dipped in and out of her frame of vision as he pulled them through the water.
"Tell me if I'm going to hit anything," he panted. "I can't see where I'm going."...