He had hoped it wouldn't come to this. Making a strategic withdrawal into a tunnel, luring in the rest of the elite squadron that pursued him to pick them off two or three at a time now that they were forced into tighter quarters. He had not heard the sound of the train from far off, and figured he had the time to keep running, slash a few soldiers, put some distance between them, and repeat.
The tunnel was deceptively longer than he presumed.
He ducked beneath the spray of incoming bullets before making a horizontal slash, Rihatsu cleaving through...
One scoop chocolate, one scoop blood.
I went inside the intensive care unit and felt the humid air. Everyone--mum, Paulie, Randy and grampa--was there. I approached dad's bed and leaned my right ear to his mouth.
He was asphyxiating, and there's no doubt he's going to get through another day. Yet, his words echoed through my head like a whisper resounding inside a cave.
I told him I just did the regular errand and took care of some things for him. He stopped.
The moon would never be the same again.
NASA, in a fit of proctological madness popped a cap in it's ass. It was no longer the benign pie in the sky of sappy Italian love songs.
The man, the one in the moon, was pissed.
The changes were slow to come. Not many people noticed at first that the tides were stronger and higher. The Bay of Fundy was virtually empty during low tide, and Nova Scotia completely submerged during high before anybody thought to ask what was up.
Lunacy was on the rise.
Werewolf sightings peaked.
Lunar eclipses 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...
"Wait, so he hit you?"
“No, I told you. He whispered just before I woke up.” I had already told the story a couple of times and Jack wasn’t listening. Obviously the porn on his cell phone far more interesting.
The voice had been at that moment when you feel yourself falling and jerk awake. ‘I really want to take you with me but I’m not allowed.’
Disorientated after several false awakenings, I felt extraordinarily tired. The short nap when my friend had gone for pizza had been a mistake. Struggling to a sitting position there was no sign of...
They would never stop.
She used to love the sight of birds on a rooftop, electric wires, even clotheslines. She used to feed them in the park, throwing crumbs and other leftover sandwich bits to the flock that would land on the concrete and nibble at her feet. But they were not content.
They wanted more.
Soon, she noticed the flock flying behind her car as she drove home from work, the store, the school. They would line up behind her like children behind the Pied Piper, only these children had coal black eyes and hearts to match. They were...
Midnight on the roof. She stood alone, shivering, cold, the wind blowing her hair across her face, blanket wrapped around her. It had gone all wrong at the party, and she knew it. She had meant to approach him, to say she was sorry, to ask him to forgive her. But instead, she froze, watching carefully from across the room while her friends chatted on, oblivious. He never once looked her way. Did he know she was there? Could he feel her presence? The truth she had spoken aloud in anger only a few days before seemed not so true...
These three peasants are gathered round a plough, drinking ale and sharing a small knob of cheese between themselves. It's a sunny day in Northumbria and the midday sun makes it hard to work, so these guys are taking a break. The ale is cheap and the cheese is rotten.
"You see the sunset last night?" asks one.
"Yes. It was beautiful." agrees a second. The third peasant doesn't speak. He just stares lengthways down the field.
"See that cow?" he finally interrupts. "Rumour is that it's magic." The others are intrigued now and stare down the field at the...
It was inexplicable that two latino, hipster twenty-somethings from East Los Angeles would talk like 85-year-old Jewish retirees from Queens, yet that was how it was.
"Pull ovah and ask fuh direck-shuns," shouted Isabel.
"I know where I'm going!" Ricky replied with a Yiddish accent that seemed to come from nowhere. "You always do this! You always want to undermine my AUTHORITY!"
He exclaimed very loudly, mostly because he was hard of hearing and couldn't monitor his own pitch. Isabel was silent for a second, silently mouthing words to herself. Then, as if in an afterthought, she said, "You just...