The daring were punished.
It seemed almost contradictory, but that was how They wanted it. Ever since the capital-t-They had taken over it, a systematic reduction of risk-taking had been put into place, until the daring were trained not to dare, the mavericks removed and replaced with the mundane.
My sister Joan had wanted to be a baker. You would think that was sufficiently uninteresting for Them, but you'd be wrong - I have no idea how They found out, but after a few bottles of wine at my house, she told me her dream of opening her own bakery....
"Travel light, but take everything with you," he said, his sky eyes looking off into the distance, "you never know when everything will leave you."
I suppose it didn't matter to me anymore, whether or not i took my life with me. there wasn't much there, really, just pieces of broken hearts and crystal tears that hit the floor. His words still echoed through my hollow body, the remains of bones crumbling beneath every sorry heaving breath. "Why wasn't I good enough?" I had asked myself, but I never knew. Perhaps it wasn't me....Perhaps it was you. Perhaps it was...
The year was 1986. I was traveling through the American South with a spaniel I had picked up along the way who answered to the name "Kenneth".
My goal was to reach Little Rock, Arkansas in order to see the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. Unfortunately, I had committed a great error and had greatly misjudged, as he would not even be elected for another six years.
Whoops.
While the spaniel who responded to the name "Kenneth" almost certainly knew that I was too early, he remained mute. In all the many weeks we spent together, he only...
"I object!"
The whole church turned and stared at the woman panting uncontrollably at the doors. Heather couldn't believe she actualy made it right on time. This type of thing only happened on T.V, or so she thought.
She moved steadily down the ilse, getting mixtures of confusion, anger and outright amusement gazes from the crowd. Of course, Paul would look confused. He stepped away from his bride, who could have melted the mesh of her veil from the looks she gave.
"Heather," Paul cleared his throat, looking around the huge crowd. "What the heck are you doing here?"
"Fighting,"...
I walked along the flat stones that made up the busy road and let the bustling crowds swallow me whole. My heart pounds in my ears. I hear a sharp shout from behind me and instictively dive over the bright green barrier. I press my body into the lush grass and take shallow breaths. The sound of thousands of footsteps set my nerves on edge. For a moment, my mind wanders to the many times my friends and I used to play hide and seek in this garden when we were younger. Children squealing in delight and running in circles....
Rudolph ran as fast as his four legs would carry him. He had run out of fairy dust over a remote forest, and unfortunately it was deer season.
The celebrity found it hard to blend in with his shiny nose. In fact, it was damn near impossible. His snoz glowed like a blinking beacon, one the hunting party was only too glad to follow. He heard a voice, not far off, call, “I see him over here, boys!”
Damnation, but they were close!
Rudolph searched the area. Could he pull the ol' mud over the nose trick again? No, who...
"why cross at all?" was the first thought. "why cross, or pass, or walk, or tread, or sprint or anything else of the sort?"
the sun was even lower than when the first thought started, oranges now completely red, soon black.
"or, why not." the next thought. "who am i to rethink, or revisit, or retry, or reimagine, or reexamine the path now before me?"
to my left, infinity. an unstoppable openness. to my right, the past, from whence i'd come. dust.
finally, twilight. but with my final choices, no regrets. only then could i step out in front of...
Water. I wish I were drowning in it now. That my car veered into the canal while I was driving home. Somewhere I shouldn't have been. A blue-house, now painted tan, that I've visited 100 times. A house where I rang the doorbell, felt stupid there was no answer, and drove home. On the way, I turned into an oncoming lane by complete accident... Cars beeped, and luckily no one was hurt. Startled, I made a U-Turn, and headed home. I wished there was a thunder storm, a hail storm, something to cover my windshield to make my car just...
"I shot my butler, but I did not shoot the chauffeur" Mrs. Kensington said. "I don't know who could have done such a thing. That poor old man."
"The butler or the chauffeur," the detective asked.
Mrs. Kensington coughed with polite outrage.
"The chauffeur, of course," she said. "The butler can rot in a thousand hells as far as I'm concerned."
The detective flipped back a few pages in his notebook.
"You say the butler had been stealing from you," he asked, scratching his nose. "Did you have any proof?"
"Proof is in the pudding, as the maid would say."...
The paradox was that while we had been sitting in a cafe in Paris, waiting for the kick, our future selves had reprogrammed the jukebox to play nothing but St. Etienne. So we sat and we drank our tea and slowly, little by little, we became our own dream. The future died there amongst the earl grey and gilt picture frames, and with it, so did she.
She wasn't more than 10 when the meteor struck Beijing, the meteor we should have been there to stop. Huddled in a doorway, she died wrapped in red silk and fire. She was...