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...
"Dragonflies are good luck," his grandmother used to say. "They are fairies' horses. Their wings spread wishes and wonder."
He remembered that and not much else about her. They would sit in the grass by the shore of the lake. He used to spend three weeks every summer out at his grandparents house. They picked blueberries and chopped wood, made cookies and walked in the woods.
He was an adult now. They were long dead.
His daughter stood in front of him, frowning, hands onm hips. "That's not true, daddy. Dragonflies are dragonflies, not horses. And fairies don't exist."
He...
"What is it you have to do again?"
Richard pointed at the screen. "You have to get the butterflies to land on that tree."
"Which one, the one on the left?"
"No," he said, "the other one, the little one."
His son crossed his arms. "Dad, this game is so lame! I don't see how you could have played this thing. The graphics suck!"
"Hey, this is 16-bit resolution! You should have seen some of the old 8-bit side-scrolling games. The graphics on them were even worse, but they were all we had. And do you hear those sound effects?"...
Leonard stumbled back. He almost fell. His heart raced and sweat stuck his shirt to his belly and back and armpits. He'd had patients worse off than Bea, patients with bloody ends, with pointless existances, tortured creatures that lived and died hooked to electricity and strapped to beds. None with the relative safety and comforts that he'd been treating Bea in, the comfort of home.
This was a scheduled meeting in the garden, she'd come from the trees, barefoot, bare arms, makeup garishly applied and with the gauzy veil over her face. His boy would laugh, he imagined, would point...
Jimmie was eternally in love with the women of his dreams. She was the most independent and confident person he knew. I heard a song about her once…
"I love her cuz she got her own. There is nothing more sexy than a girl who wants but don’t need me.
Young independent, yeah she works hard but you can’t tell from the way that she walks. She doesn’t slow down cuz she ain’t got time to be complaining, surely gonna shine.
She don’t expect nothing from no guy. She plays aggressive but she’s still shy. You will know her softer...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up. Jerome, her uncle's brother, took no notice of her. Her hands were cold and shaking. He continued eulogizing. "He was a great man, and there's no denying. We all..."
"No."
That got his attention. All of them, really. She clasped her hands together tightly, willing her voice to be steady. Jerome raised an eyebrow at her. "Did you have something you wanted to say, Candace? Why don't you come on up here and say it?"
She swallowed, hard. The idea of...
I know, I know, there's a million things I need to do. Every day, a million things. Check this, talk to him, to her. Don't forget to fill this out. Drive there, don't forget. Get it right the first time so you don't lose more time doing it twice. Or worse.
Only at the end of the day, is it legal to relax. Only when the world is on half-time, lunch break, dinner break, time out, penalty box.
The sun is one big green light for everyone. You can't stop when the world is go.
If I didn't want to...
.. 2080 ... 2090 ... 2100. 2100 NE Swenson Avenue, that was the address. Harold was certain of it. He could almost feel an unnatural attraction to the simple white door with blue finish that innocently faced the street, surrounded by colorful flower pots.
A hesitant step after another, his heart pounding, he approached it. His thoughts were hundreds of miles away, in his home country, where his family was held hostage. They were watching his every move, listening to his every breath. If he failed, his wife and children would die.
His hand rested on the doorknob. The windows...
My mother toils under the assumption that she is beautifully imperfect but the world should be perfect. She reacts to news like a small child. Living in the moment with the belief that what is going on now will be what goes on forever. I am her child and I am the same.
We slump together from depression to remission, my mother and I. We stay on the couch for days at a time drinking wine, eating Oreos, and watching reality television. Then Mom gets an alimony check or I finally land a job interview and the fever breaks. We...
Lange onboard sweating it out, Lange onboard getting cold grits, Lange in his bunk in those pitiful few hours to himself when he could think on his home, on the vast seas between him and it. Reciting lines--fragments--from those books his sister Rachel used to read aloud. The carousing above over and only flatulence angry growling left over.
And when the crew came alongside the _Steadfast_, and murdered the husband in plain sight of the wife and the girl, whom they took below, Lange mopped blood and chummed the sea with the husband's body for the sharks. It was then...