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....
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....
I am really nervous. It's there. Looming. And I feel like if I move it will know, and everything around me will crumble.
So I wait and I wonder. Why I came. Why I am still here. Why there aren't forces out there that could rectify what is clearly the most dire of situations.
But I know there are no such forces. It's just me. Alone. Except I am not alone. It is still here. There. Moving closer.
I know there are only two choices: stay and await my ultimate defeat. The ultimate death. Stagnation...darkness. Or move closer to it,...
I liked Erica, but Daddy didn't. She did everything for him, like the man on the advert said she would, and it had meant I wouldn't have to anymore.
She had mousy hair and it fell around her pale face in curls. She always smiled at me with her pretty eyes and high cheek bones, and at Daddy. Though he would never smile back.
Erica was always sweet and loving and kind, just like Mummy had been.
I still feel sad when I think of Mummy sometimes. Especially when I happened to brush Erica's skin. It was cold. Not like...
“Come here.”
The little boy looked at her, then back at the kitchen door.
“Come here!”
Something crashed in the kitchen. The boy turned away and stumbled over to her. She took him by the hand. “Come on, we have to go.”
“What's wrong with him?”
“Doesn't matter, just come on. We have to hide.”
“Why?”
“I did something, and now he's mad.”
“What did you do?”
“We have to hide.”
“What did you do?”
“I stole all of it.”
“What?”
“After school today, I stole all his drinks.”
“All of them?”
“Yeah.”
“You know he gets mad when he...
If I had a box full of pounds from every time someone said if I had a pound for every time
It would probably have like £50 in it
Because although that's a common phrase
It doesn't come up THAT often
Think about it
How many times have you actually heard someone use that phrase
Probably like fifty
Yeah?
I thought so
So next time
Put a pound somewhere you can forget it
And then when you find it
You'll remember this story
And that way
As long as you are alive
So am I
And if you told it...
Taste was one of those things that was meant to be very personal, and yet everyone seemed to recognise bad taste.
The joke may have been ill-timed, but she maintained that it wasn't in "bad taste" - soon finding herself in the minority (one, in fact).
Fine. Fine, fine, fine - he would've laughed, if he'd been there. Then again, him not being there was the entire point.
He would've laughed at that, too.
It was a nice, warm day, and that was ridiculous - funerals were meant to be full of rain and the dark and thunder and the...
The dapper man picked up a penny. Having stopped, he was hit by an unsuspecting driver who failed to see him get skewered by the starting handle from the high cab of the grocer's van. At first I smiled for having placed the coin, specially bought at auction 68 years from now. And then… absolutely nothing happened.
When SciFi authors tell you of the Grandfather Paradox, don't believe a bloody word. I'd spent a fortune, and most of my adult life pushing the boundaries of Quantum Symmetry, SuperStrings and a host of other areas of Science and Technology. All for...
The dream had been wonderful, yet it would never be real: she knows, even as she wakes, in the taste of bitter almonds at the back of her throat.
She tries to still herself completely so she can relive it in the morning haze. There was a boy-- no, a man-- and he had called her somewhere, taken her somewhere--
She breathes. In, out. In, out. Maybe there's something in dreamcatchers after all.
There had been a man in the dream. That is certain. There had been a man in the dream, and he had--
The fan drones incessantly. She...
I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead.
It occurred a while back, and while I was living, I thought it was pretty unfair. Most people get 60, 70 years of life. Enough people got 30 or 40 years of life.
I got 25. By the time you're 25, you're only finally getting your last degree, your first bit of experience, stepping over that last big stone in your path before you enter the real world. The one where you earn enough money to do...