Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She was looking at her mother, who cried silently.
This young girl wasn't sure why her mother cried, and she was afraid to find out. The last time she found her mother in an emotional state, she was chastised for interfering.
But, Amy couldn't help but look at her mother as she shed tears. In front of her was a plate with nothing but crumbs, a coffee mug, a notebook, and a vase with flowers. From the looks of things, Amy's mother was enjoying a snack....
Too saccharine. Too weepy. No dice.
Balanced on the line, he told her again, "Put it down!"
She couldn't move even if she had wanted to, the butt of the gun felt slippery in her clammy hands but she refused to reliquish her hold on it. The line was a mere streak in the dust, but the signifance of that line, oh the significance that it held. It held the entire future, hers and his, the future of nations.
"Put it down, and step toward me."
"Back off!" She shouted, readjusting her grip on the gun and aiming it squarely at his chest.
"Just step over...
In the beginning she thought he was an alright gentlemen. Until he began showing little bits and pieces of himself. Now it seemed ridiculous that she could have fallen in love with this boy-man, this immature piece of bones, flesh and nothing else. She laughed to herself, almost becoming hysterical at the thought that she could have been shackled to this man, that as a Catholic, she would have wrestled with leaving him and when she eventually did, she would have to wrestle with a feeling of guilt for the rest of her life.
Which brought her to God. Funny...
Today he awoke to the blaring sound of thunder. "Again", he thought to himself. It had been just like this for 38 days straight now. The long hours throughout the day and evening. The animals making their sounds all the time, never ceasing sometimes; the frogs, he couldn't stand the tree frogs.
And there were the ladies on board the boat, always nagging, "Noah, do this", it just never stopped. Actually at one point he was completely ready to abandon ship and climb up the inside wall of the hull and out that little window and float off to wherever...
I've never liked nature. I never saw the point. I've got a perfectly comfortable bed, a nice kitchen, television, the Internet, you name it. Nature has bugs, extreme temperatures, all kinds of dangers and obstacles. That's why humans built civilization - to overcome all of that. What campers and nature-lovers are saying is that our entire civilization is a terrible idea.
It all changed when I fell in love with Eve. How could I fall so hard for a nature-lover? What was I thinking? Obviously I wasn't thinking. She stepped up to me in the grocery store, commented on the...
In retrospect Philip probably shouldn't have put the bologna in the microwave. But Philip was 32 years old. He still had a childish sense of curiosity about the world. And he wondered what would happen.
For the last month Patty had been bringing her dog to work. A small ratty terrier named Bongo.
It barked at Philip every time he walked by Patty's desk. Not a "Let's play" bark either. More like a "Get the fuck away from Patty" kind of bark. Like he was even interested in Patty, a roundish red head with glasses with an annoying whistle...
They had forgotten to close the window flap on the tent the night before. It was early morning now, and the light had started to come in; a cool, damp air had already come in and settled into the corners.
She had been awake for about 20 minutes, annoyed by the light that irritated her even through her closed eyelids. Michael was curled up in the corner, half in his sleeping bag with one leg hanging out. His shirt was undone and had spilled open, and even now he smelled like booze. His bandage had bled through the night and...
The music in her headphones..."if you lift me up, and get me through this night, I know I'll rise tomorrow, and I'll be strong enough to try..." She stared through the mist and clouds wondering where she had gone. What had become of her life, why here, why now? Kaitlyn wanted to run away from life, love, because she really had neither. The Adirondack mountains towered over her, the chill in the North Country air was giving her bare arms a chill. Kait's brother died yesterday, 9/10/01, and today even more people, so many people died. She was glad to...
Her youth was long past gone, as emily stared out of her nursing home. Her distant family no longer visited, her friends had slowly drifted from her memories and living years as her mind and body waned towards the final chapter of her life.
Living was no longer an adventure, but a dull existence of being. Happiness and love existed only in her fading memory. She stared across the grey sky and saw a lone drifting green balloon floating slowly towards the endless sky. She felt a connection to the escaping balloon, she sighed and wished her last wish as...