The ransom never came, poor fools.
The two kidnappers waited with young Jacob Cartee standing between them. The boy looked well, unhurt by the men who'd taken him. That was good. James despised child abusers. "In ten," James said softly, speaking into the mike on his collar.
He shifted his weight, noted the direction of the wind. Slowly, he inhaled as he gazed through the scope on his M99. Time counted down. At "one" he exhaled and pulled the trigger. One of the kidnappers - he'd taken to calling him Ogre - went down instantly. A second bullet escaped the...
She was the most delicate girl in town. Or at least, that's what they all thought. With her prim private school uniform, glossy ringlet curls and polite smile, she had them all fooled. Everyone except me. Noone knew her like I did though. Sharing a bedroom gives an unprecedented view into a person's inner psyche. I'm not just talking about dirty washing left on the floor and mugs growing mould, though that's gross enough. It's not even just the boys, or increasingly lately - men, she would shimmy down the drain pipe to meet. It's not even that her straight...
The tigers snarled at each other as they fought over the prize. Eyes narrowed, they watched for the slightest hesitation, the smallest weakness, in their enemy's eyes and stance. Finally, the larger of the two feinted to the left, then ran right with his booty. Quickly, the other followed as the world waited with baited breath.
Then, it happened. The great tiger leapt away from his pursuer, seeming to soar. The buzzer went off a split second after the ball dropped into the net and the crowd roared as the score changed: 63-59.
"I guess not everything's better in Metter,"...
Absent. The perfect word to describe the situation.
Paul and Maria Strickland sat at their kitchen table eating breakfast, as they did every day. Forks scraped against plates as they lifted their scrambled eggs to their mouths, chewed, swallowed. All in silence. They'd been married for twenty years, eating in silence together for fifteen. Eating in silence was the only thing they ever did together anymore, except take care of their son, Mark.
The boy watched them from the den, where he'd taken to eating alone as he watched TV, a tray attached to the armrests of his black Quickie...
He had climbed the steep Acropolis, seeking Athena Parthenos (the virgin), every time work or pleasure or strange fates called him to Athens. Yet today he paused by the Temple of Dionysis, only about a third of the way up the olive treed slope. One of the several custodians, some in plastic and metal cells, others, like this young lady beneath whatever shade the Gods (and strategic umbrellas) could provide. Something about her effortless attention, seeing all who paused or passed, while seemingly merged into a thick hard back, caught his attention.
She sat, regally, letting the Sun and people...
Froniga, or Fron (as most of her US friends and relations called her) was a patient sort of soul. More in touch with her forebears than many Americans, perhaps because she was closer to her immigrant roots than most. She'd married into the "Land of the Free" as much as she had been born there, not really considering where she lived as something to define her. Maybe that was the Romany spirit showing through. She couldn't tell. She didn't care.
Of course, her attracted neighbour did present a problem. She was who she was, and it was hardly her fault...
It was the quiet way Fron did the simple things - anticipating a glass of water, settling to a joint task, silently prompting something urgently forgotten - that Wilhelm noticed more than anything else. She would just eye smile at him when he, yet again amazed at her casual thoughtfulness, would gratify his mutterings. As if words were not necessary.
It was as bewitching as it was uncanny. He felt she could pluck a dropped desire out of the air, well before its longing weight would shatter it on the hard stone floor of the bakery. Slowly, quickly, her careless...
That part of New York was home to several artisan outlets and small, incubated, cottage industries. Rather like a hipster vision of battery farmed chickens, Wilhelm noted. Right next door to his bakery - Purveyor of the Finest Home-Baked Goods* (* all dietary requirements catered for) - he was aware dimly of a bespoke micro brewery, although no liquor of any kind had passed his ancestor shudderingly German lips in over forty years. Wilhelm didn't approve of alcohol. Not for a long time, though he had once courted the hop and the grape until their avoidable, but probably inevitable divorce....
The dress blue uniforms were itchy. They were tired and hot and couldn't wait for the ceremony to be over. The captain looked across the water at the setting sun. At least that part would be over, and they'd get some respite from the day's heat. But yet...
He looked down, into the cool depths of the ocean waters surrounding the metal monstrosity he had called home for almost three years now.
"And do you, Mark Wallace, take this mermaid, Jasmine Petals, to be your lawfully wedding wife? In sickness and in health... forever and ever, by Neptune's Trident?"
The...
It had to be the bumblebee parachute. I wanted one with Hello Kitty on it but Al said no. Black and yellow clashed with the sky. That was important.
Good choice, given the photograph above. Man, I thought Lady Liberty's presence was so commanding that she'd always be the focal point. Not true. It's me and Al in our parachutes.
Yep. We landed on Liberty Island and there's a whole throng of well-wishers around us. Someone asks if someone watched that old David Copperfield special where he made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Nuh uh. That was a long time...