"No. Seriously. More natural. It won't kill you.
"What? The camera. The wait, though. The wait might kill me.
"You, sit down. No, please. *Please* sit down. No, not you. Because you're in white trousers, that's why!
"Look, I know this is new. This is new to me, too. But in the future? Oh, yes! In the future! This will be the thing. THE. THING.
"What? No. No, they won't need flash pans. I'm certain. Or these -- these tents. No, they'll be able to carry them around in their pockets. No, not like those pockets. No, sir, please, hands...
Through the veil she was almost as pretty as I'd wished she would have been the first time we met for real, in real life, in person on the street. The love of my life.
I remembered that in certain photographs she had this quality, like an angel or maybe just someone who thought they were one, so strung out they could touch the sky. She wasn't that pretty, no pixie dust queen, just another girl who liked to make faces. But I think I love her.
You hope that, and I hoped that, the love of my life--because that's...
There was blood on my pillow.
My nose was dry. I hadn't bit my cheek. I hadn't somehow lost a tooth. A quick examination of my skull told me that it remained intact.
Oh, duh, I have DNA-Vision. I forget sometimes.
I scanned the blood on my pillow. It wasn't mine.
So where had it come from?
"Ah ha! It was me!" yelled someone from the foot of my bed.
It was my arch-nemesis, The Hemophiliac. Of course!
"What have you done?!" I roared.
"I snuck into your bedroom last night and bled on your pillow! But don't worry; I...
She loved that old house. It used to be one of the very first churches built in the tiny town that had disappeared around it. Then it went up for sale and the woman had jumped at the chance to buy it. The renovation was long and expensive but as she stood inside the finally finished building she thought that just maybe it was here little slice of heaven on Earth.
Smiling, she let the vaulted front door close behind her and turned to move to the brand new staircase that lead from the entry foyer towards the upstairs. Putting...
The daring were punished. They were punished with exactly what they wanted, and found out the paucity of their imagination and desires.
It was near midsummer when the djinn arrived in Baghdad. He promised to each person, exactly what they wanted, the one thing. There were no rules, no catches. This was no monkey paw to wish upon, but a djinn in all his smoking glory, blue fire leaping from his eyes and his ears, red lightning visible from his mouth when he spoke, and a long rumbling thunder when he laughed at those that came to make their wishes....
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take. The thought kept running through Eddie's mind as he waited through another Dealer change. He removed his knock-off designer shades and attempted to rub away the hours of lost sleep. As the pair of pocket cards slid in his direction he affixed the shades back in place and took a deep breath. Contrary to popular belief perception is hardly ever brought on by a sweeping vignette of thoughts while staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night. Many times it arrives in moments of...
The pistol was cocked, ready to go. The grip felt odd in my hand, and the barrel kept dipping down towards the ground. What would happen if I actually fired the damn thing? I was afraid it would fly back and smash my teeth out.
Nevertheless, I wrapped both hands around the grip as I had seen countless times on television and tried to steady the deadly steel. It wavered like my resolve at the sight of my nemesis, sprawled and harmless looking on the couch. But the second he awoke, he would look less like a sleeping kitten and...
Th dapper man picked up a penny and turned it over in his fingers, scrutinising it.
"Yes, this is definitely his," he said, after some time.
"How do you know?" his companion prompted, with bemused admiration.
"We know our chap must have had a lucky penny. This one is worn, as if it has been rubbed many times - for luck, you see - but it is still dirty. Our chap is a dockhand; it is grime from his workplace that has become ingrained in the coin. He must have dropped it when he realised he was being pursued."
"How...
"I'm a monster," said my son, dangling my old Nikon camera behind his back.
"I can see that," I said. "What's your special monster power?"
"Scary faces!" he said. "I can make a scary face that makes you make a scaredy face!"
I instantly put on a poker face. "I'd like to see you try."
He puckered his face for a few seconds, then went, "Graaahh," and screwed up his eyes and stuck out his tongue.
"Eeeeeeee!!" I cried, opening my eyes and mouth as wide as I could.
As smoothly as a three-year-old can, he pulled out the camera...
Norman was a doctor. He was a doctor because he was good at fixing things, and at some point in his life he determined that the most important things that needed fixing were human beings. So he became a doctor.
He looked rather doctor-ish, in his trenchcoat, his traveling case of medical supplies and his pattern baldness. He was friendly, having the bedside manner that everyone expected of a good doctor.
The day that the sun became sick, people all over the world panicked. Some rioted, looted, killed one another, for in a world that was nearing its end, one...