1943
Population. 1943
Even painted over, the 2 was still visible if you looked at the sign at an angle. And the previous 1 if you were real close, but from a passing car, residents or the occasional visitor to Sleepy Falls would see, if they were paying attention, that a new resident now inhabited the town. Ted wiped his brow with his customary cotton handkerchief and reseated the dusty Sheriff's Hat.
"It's not straight." said this week's Deputy, who decided to punctuate this pearl of wisdom with an increasingly annoying, yet habitual spitting out the passenger window.
The fact...
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...
"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."...
"what is it," he asked, "With people today?"
"Well, that's a fairly broad question, isn't it? There couldn't possibly be a sufficient answer," I started to say. I got as far as "We..." before he started back in again.
"No no no no no." The volume doubled. "NO NO NO NO NO NO!"
"No what, dude?" I tried to sip, but my glass was empty. Worst service ever. If I could just catch the eye of the damn
"NO!" He grabbed my arm. "Don't be this, like, moral relativist. Some things are better than others, and people used to read...
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....
When I was young, I would sneak out onto my roof with my father's cigarettes and chain smoke. They knew I did it. They found the butts on the ground in the yard. But no one said anything.
I sat up there, puff puffing away, texting a girl I thought I could never out grow.
"Run away with me," she said. I wanted to. I almost did. But I was almost done with my senior year of high school. Things were okay for me for the first time in years.
She never forgave me for saying no. The last time...
Running, running from the people behind me. I don't have the time to look back. But I know they are after me. I flee along the soccer field once again. As I have done for so many days after school. There words are thrown at me , they hit me like the punch that knocks out the boxer. The though of boxer reminds me, I am not small any more, I have been running through this fields to training, to practice, to learn to fight back.
I turn around, I use my words to shield myself from there words, I...
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...
"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...