The lamp wouldn't turn on. He struggled with it for what seemed like half an hour, swearing under his breath, and then swearing out loud, loudly out loud, freaking out both of the cats in the apartment. He would apologize to them later. Anyway, they should be used to it by now.
And then once he got the damned thing on he couldn't turn it off.
He wasn't going to waste half an hour on this useless project, too. He wanted to go to bed. He simply unplugged the lamp. That turned it off. That worked. Now the apartment was...
The lamp wouldn't turn on. This was because I was twisting Arthur's nose instead of the lamp switch. However, this doesn't change the fact that the lamp wouldn't turn on.
"Ouch! Stop twisting my nose," Arthur said.
"Turn on the lamp," I said, twisting his nose.
"Not until you stop twisting my nose," he said. It sounded more like he said "twizdig by dose," which sounds hilarious and just made me want to twist his nose further.
"Never!" I shouted. I wasn't sure why I shouted never, but it felt like the right thing to shout. I could sense Arthur...
The lamp wouldn't turn on and I had to sleep in the dark. I had to imagine what was lurking without light. I was afriad at first and then my eyes adjusted. My pupils opened up. In the morning the sun came in a few strands at a time and I realized that I was still alive and the monsters, goblins, all the things I'm afraid of didn't get me. The light doesn't have to be on to feel safe. Safety is still there with light. I listen to my dog snore and she snorts. She is fat and I...
When you dream you can dream in color and any color will do. The more vibrant the better. When I'm old i will dream in purple because I read a book once that said purple was an elderly color. When I was young I dreamt of popsicles and bubblegum the colors of the rainbow and pink hues. I remember all of my dreams giving them varying degrees of importance based on my age and how seriously I'm taking myself. Dreams about indiscretions are the best. I wake up and realize that I didn't do it after all. I didn't cheat...
I was not at ease without the lights. I definitely felt an insect of some sort, crawling along my chest... Perhaps it was a spider? Wait, is a spider an insect? Well, it can't be a mammal, that's for sure.
The lights. I felt along the side of the wall, hoping to catch the lamp unplugged; but no, it was plugged in and my heart sank a bit. I didn't want to change the bulb. But what if it wasn't the bulb? What if it was an electrical outage?
What if this was the return of the dark ages, where...
The lamp wouldn't turn on.
Goddamn electricity company, Rob grumbled to himself, angrily flicked the switch a few more times just to make sure. This was the third power cut they had had this week, and it wasn't exactly the warmest of months to be sitting in a house at night. And without light flooding the streets and houses, the chance of an attack increased by about a thousand percent.
Night was falling, most people were already in their houses, door and windows securely bolted and nailed shut, wooden shutters and planks covering every possible entrance. Rob shut his own...
The lamp wouldn't turn on. And he hated the dark. Always had. Kind of a rare phobia.
He tried again, but of course it didn't work any better the first time. Could be the tagline to a life, he thought.
Nothing for it then but to head out. The room was familiar, the door should be...that chair wasn't there before, but the floor - the floor was right where it always had been.
Ok, hands and knees then. Slide along, feel the wall, aha! Doorjamb, doorknob, turn, swing, hallway. A little ambient light from outside. Feel along the wall -...
Jolene woke slowly, feeling extremely cold and uncomfortable.
She was indoors, but lying on a cold, carpet-less floor. It was dark, save for a glimmer of light peeking through the outline of a door.
She couldn't remember how she came to be where she was. This realization frightened her; it was not her home, nor any place she knew. She got to her feet and tried to open the door.
It was locked.
A sound of sliding metal; light came through a grate near eye-level. "I see you're finally awake," she heard, in a voice so heavily distorted she couldn't...
It confused them, the gnarled branch lying across rows of newly planted wheat. The tree had been healthy and the weather clear. A bob of bushy fur worked its way along the length of the fallen wood as a squirrel investigated the carnage.
Years from now, when the children had scaled the sheer rock face near their home, they'd think back to this day.
"And now where shall we climb?" the boy asked.
"There," the girl replied, a mountain peak under her finge
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
Passersby ignored the frail, shivering thing, their eyes never dropping, their heads never turning. She might have been a doll in a window, or something someone left behind. She wasn't any of their business.
A little round boy with a little round face in his little grey jacket wrapped around his little round belly poked at the girl with his little round foot.
The girl, who wasn't much older than he, looked up from the protective valley of her arms and smiled at him. The little...