Acid ate up the canvas, leaving the moonlit scene unrecognisable. No longer priceless, breathtaking, desirable. Now a screwed up mess, destined for the trash can, ruined beyond any hope of restoration. Mr. Slovenias the gallery owner cried for the first time in years that day.
Jack spent his first night in jail. Unrepentant. Glad he'd ruined the masterpiece. Certain in the knowledge his act would save humanity.
Betty, Jack's long suffering mother realised that for the first time in her life, she was relieved he was spending the night elsewhere. In fact, if she were really honest with herself, she...
Mike Radley is from Catterick Village and has an ugly nose and a fat gut. Sheila Webb, from Catterick Garrison, isn't very attractive either. They have a date tonight because their internet dating service matched them.
Mike Radley has a pint of lager in his hand and foam on his top lip that he hasn't bothered to wipe off. Sheila Webb notices but doesn't say anything: Sheila Webb is too busy poking the black plastic drinking straw in and out of her alcopop bottle.
Mike Radley's dating profile says that his ideal first date would be a romantic walk, perhaps...
He set the plate before her. Two slices of charcoal blackened toast, plump stoneless cherry jam, no butter or spread. It wasn't punishment for climbing out the bedroom window to staying out late again. It was all they ever ate after mom died. They got through a loaf of bread a day.
She no longer cared what happened. All she could think about was Ross. He cooked her pumelled bloody steak, creamy mash with chives, grilled tomatoes covered in mixed grain pepper from a silver pot. Loved her with food, milky coffee and kisses.
Next week she was going to...
"You been seeing the television?" the Guard said.
Huxton squinted, through the bleariness of sleep into the bleach of daylight, he only saw the form of the Guard, an outline of a man, faceless and without detail. Slowly, he sat up feeling as if his bones were brittle to snap. "What?"
He wished he could seem more heroic than a man who has been beaten and tied and imprisoned for days. He felt horrible with a dehydrated mouth that made sticky sounds each time he parted his lips.
"You been seeing the television? They say you is dead, man. They...
"She'd have preferred the electric chair," Melanie said.
A half grin sat on her lips as she stirred the crinkle fry in the ketchup far longer than anyone stirs crinkle fries in ketchup.
"You know when they were discovering the electric chair, they would like pay kids to bring in stray dogs and cats to electrocute to get the voltage just right," Beloved said.
"That's horrible," Melanie replied and she dropped the crinkle fry. "Why would you say that?"
"They finally tested it on an elephant!" Beloved said.
"Wait, who is they?" Melanie asked. She lifted her nose in the...
I tried to avoid holding the parcel knowing what it contained but had to or else it would look suspicious. I know that Tom would be eager to open the well travelled box wrapped in thick brown paper covered in butterfly stamps and tied up with old string, secured with a familiar wax seal. He would probably visualise his wife dipping the wax stick in a candle, waiting for the melting to begin, carefully dropping a few blobs in the right places, hoping to avoid burning her fingers.
Wanda of course did not put lovingly baked cakes and pies into...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up. "Everybody take a good long look at these" she exclaimed.
Jeff turned around to see Samantha holding a rat in each hand. She was smiling for some reason. And then it happened. The rats smelled a rat. That's exactly why Samantha had brought them. She knew if anyone could sniff out the rat that was most definitely sitting somewhere in the class, it would be another rat. (To catch you up, someone told the teacher that Samantha was cheating off of...
She'd have preferred the electric chair. She'd always been a fan of electricity. She recalled the first time her mother had given her a knife and set her down in front of the light socket. "Go on...Stick it in there good now honey" her mother had told her. And the jolt. Wow. Margaret knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life from that very first light socket. Electricity would be her calling. And boy did she answer that call.
As a young girl she would put on shows for the kids on the block by hopping in the...
The daring were punished. Oh, how they were punished. For their transgression of assumption: public mockery. For their foolish hubris in believing that one could get away with such tom foolery: A dressing down by the town jokesman (and I use jokesman loosely as anyone in town would and will tell you that he was only installed as the town jokesman thanks to nepotism. After all, it's his father who is in charge of humor.
Yes they were a sight to see, the daring. The sad faces of such dissapointment as you would assume most of them saw some sort...
We made a little church of our own when we promised to marry. You asked me when I barely understood how to love you, and I'd been innocent so long that I think the moment you told me you loved me you became ever more desperate to snap me up. Three days after the initial declaration came the proposal. I ran away from you and hid.
You're a terrible boy. Everyone says so. I'd heard the talk since the beginning of time and I'd seen the queue of sobbing girls you left behind you. And yet.... you told me loved...