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...
Look, I admit, I'm at least partly responsible for the situation. It's my fault I'M here, and not his, er, mine.
The pronouns can get really confusing, so maybe I should just back up. It's not easy being a clone, or, shall I say a time-displaced duplicate of him. I mean, of myself (see?). The accident happened a while ago, really long enough for him, the other me, to get used to it. We both decided that we'd stay in the same house and have the same life; he owed me that much, for saving his (my) life.
I DON'T...
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...
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...
"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...
They were trapped for seven days. Faced with a myriad of uncertainties, this much Antonius knew to be true. The pangs of hunger had eventually morphed into a constant feeling of nausea. However there was no escaping the continual thirst that couldn't be quenched. How he desired his lips to touch the current of a fresh spring. Anything to replace the mix of his urine and rain water he had survived on this past week. Still the worst of his locked away environment was the person with whom he shared his cell, Marcus.
"How can he sit there with that...
"So, old woman, how do you cure Love at First Sight?"
The crone laughed like a deadman's rattle. "Ah, there's a thing. Well, if you were some maid, I'd say a kiss. Or to be truly rid of it, a marriage." She pronounced marriage 'marry-ahj' the old way of yore.
"Neither is possible. I'm already wed, and happily too, were it not for this accursed lust that's come over me."
"Tell me her name and her story." the wise one requested. Of course, she already knew the girl. The lovesick sow who'd pleaded for a love spell. Yet she listened...
It never speaks,
it barely breathes,
it never fades away,
It sucks you up, then spits you out,
leaving you behind.
It tugs at your heart,
then casts it out like trash.
it walks and talks with others,
but ignores you completely.
It cast it's line,
and pulled you in,
then threw you to the sharks,
you spun in it's orbit,
only to fly out and land on your face.
it left you for things,
pieces of paper and plastic.
it orbited your world once,
the left to spin through another.
that is the behavior of the void.
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...