The dapper man picked up a penny.
Then he picked up a dime.
"Which of these is worth more?" he asked the children arrayed in three neat rows on the floor in front of him.
"The dime!" they chimed in chorus.
"Very good!" said the dapper man. "And why is it worth more?"
"It's shiny!"
"It's pretty!"
"It's more specialer!"
"I've got three of 'em in my pocket!"
"Great answers, children!" said the dapper man. "But actually, a dime is worth more because it's so much easier to use a dime for Rhyme Time!"
The children cheered and began to...
Martin put the off-white china mug to his thin lips and took a long drink of his rapidly cooling coffee. His eyes scanned over the classified ads for the hundredth time but, once again, there was nothing. Nothing in his field, nothing in his area, nothing, nothing, nothing. The pen poised in his right hand tapped against the page angerly and he took another mouthful, swishing the lukewarm liquid between his cheeks.
"Good morning, pumpkin." Candice's bare feet padded along the bare hardwood behind him, and Martin soon found his girlfriend's arms wrapped tightly around his chest, her face buried...
Fault. It is so common a word. Used by so many to allay the suspicion that they are truly the ones responsible. And who am I? I am no different.
My leg moved as if in a dream, gliding through time and space like it was made of water, no jelly, no gravity. It moved, ever so slowly towards a destination that I couldn't help but be brought to. Call it fate, call it fault call it whatever you will but in the end that is where I ended up. One foot in the street and another on the sidewalk....
The Dapper Man picked up a penny. He brought it up to eye level, examining it critically. It was smooth, round and shiny. Its surface was unadorned, save for a shiny "1" engraved on the face.
"So, what you're saying is that I collect one hundred of these...", he began.
"...and we can buy access to the next level", came the hurried reply.
The Dapper Man eyed his colleague, doubt riding in his voice. After all, the One-Eyed Cowboy always had an angle in these dealings.
"You know, I've not been playing this game for long, but it seems to...
The bottom of the fountain was a shimmering mural of pennies, the dapper man reached in and picked up a penny, this particular one caught his eye, something gleamed differently about it, something that niggled in his memory. He had a vision of walking this route as a boy, knickers and plaid, a little beret on his dark head.
As the memory became clear he saw his mother, in her radiance that was lost as he got older. The years withered her frame emaciated her skin mere parchment covering frail bones. Cancer. She had died not long after his fifth...
The dapper man picked up a penny. He rolled it around in his fingers, enjoying the coolness of it. It was raining, and he had had only seen it because the bronze colour had shone up in the middle of a shallow puddle.
The dapper man remembered a rhyme he had heard when he was tiny. See a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck. He thought there might be more to it than that, but that was enough for now. He had a Very Important Meeting to go to that afternoon, and if a bit...
The dapper man picked up a penny and found a little hole. The hole was smaller than the penny, but larger than a dime. The man, dapper and penny-wise, bent down on dapper knees, head bowed, right eye squinting into dime-sized hole.
"Dimes, dimes, dimes! Mole men flipping dimes, muddy mason jars tight with dimes!"
He wigle
The dapper man picked up a penny. He inspected it, rolling it over, back and forth in the palm of his hand. satisfied, he pocketed it and kept walking down the street, a whistle blowing through his thin lips.
He stopped at a newspaper stand and debated over the local or the national paper. He glanced from side to side down the street and asked the man working there if he had anything more adult.
The clerk gave him a knowing nod and reached under the counter. The dapper man pulled at the neck of his suddenly tight shirt. He...
Birds. I hate badminton. Eye-hand coordination was never my strength.
"You'll have fun," Fanny told me.
I hate how the little birdies fall apart if you step on them. Which I always do. They're easier to miss, fallen in the long grass like puffs of dandelions.
"Tell her to play," Fanny told her brother. We avoided eye contact. Like we always did when she was around. Our secret.
"You'll have fun," he said, not looking at me. "I'll let you win."
I didn't want to beat anybody, least of all him. I wanted to fold him in my arms, cradle...
There was blood on my pillow. I flew out of bed as soon as I noticed it, but I could not remember where it had come from. I began to panic as I stared at it and tried to think about what I had done.
Was I attacked?
Was I drunk?
Was I a party in pillow-related homicide?
These questions whirled through my head until a sudden noise nearly knocked me over with fright. The phone was ringing. I worried about who might be calling, and simultaneously tried to collect myself. "Hello," I said, "Who ith thith?"
These words alone...