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...

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Johnny, my boyfriend was aptly named. Laura, my dad's girlfriend called him 'The Pirate' because of his long dark curly hair, caught up around the forehead with an old blue and white bandana. Looking remarkably like Johnny Depp in his Caribbean pirate movies.

I suspected something was going on between them. Lots of eye contact, protracted, meaningful. And they were always joking about, you know that kind of banter where you can just feel the sexual tension.

Johnny was handsome so I suppose it wasn't that unusual. He looked mean and sexy in his long black leather coat, black boots...

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I jumped. I blacked out. When I awoke, head ringing and eyes spotted with colours, he turned round slowly.

"You ever heard of an Ox Bow Lake?"

"nuhuh" I said. Mind you, the gag would have rendered the same result as a Shakespeare soliloquy. 

"sahwiwochee" Hell, it was different. Maybe if you were a dentist, this conversation would be less one sided. I eyed the man who had broken in to the lab, wondering if he'd had orthodontist training. He knew his way round a physics lab alright, but fiddling with the quantum accelerator probably wasn't the best idea. That...

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It wasn't so bad, the cancer, eating me from the inside out. Started with headaches, diagnoses, hopes and dreams dashed like fine china on the asphalt. My hands shaking, pillow wet in the morning, children gripping me, knowing without words that life was changing. Daddy is dying, mommy said. Like grandma. No, daddy isn't going to heaven. There is no heaven. Only the great void. Its nothing to be afraid of Sofie. Daddy loves you. More doctors and pills, and then pain and then...nothing. The desire to life squashed like a grape on the supermarket floor. Life itself spinning, a...

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It approached. The deadline was upon him. There was no more time, no more stalling, no more pleading and simply no more giving. It was time, a harsh fate was to be met. Failure on all accounts, many unsuccessful attempts, it was not good enough. Their eyes met, tears sprang to hers and determination hardened his jaw. There was no way out, this was it. They would not see him cry. They would not see him ground down. He raised his hand and placed it on the window that separated them. She did the same. They had each said all...

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Whap! That's what the thunderbolt felt like. Never felt one before that fateful day. Not sure I can stand another.

I remember the first day I saw her, the woman of my dreams.  I didn’t know she was the woman of my dreams at first, that came the moment I saw her smile.

A colleague and I were talking one day and her name came up.  He said if you ever see her smile, you’ll never forget it.  He was right.  One day, not long after, I happened to make her smile and that was it.  That was the day the...

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The conversation lasted two words: Alright? ...Yeah

It wasn't groundbreaking, it wasn't revolutionary, it wasn't even poetry, but it was all they needed to say.

They had been the best of friends once, closer than brothers. George had had his own room at Jack's house, Jack had had his own shelf in George's fridge. But somewhere along the way, they had lost that.

Was it because Lissy, George's ex-girlfriend had hated Jack, was it because of the fact that Jack went off to uni while George stayed in their hometown, or had it merely been because of the fact that...

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Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.

"Ladies? Gentlemen? Entities?" Helen paused. No response.

Helen glanced around. The large workroom -- some schizophrenic combination of retro and avant0-garde -- was loud, clicking and warbling and chatting in a very large number of tongues.

Helen cleared her throat. It should have been for effect, but it was because her throat had suddenly dried, as if she had swallowed the entirety of the Sahara back on Terra. "People! And non-people! Listen!"

To their credit, many did. Many didn't, but that...

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Peasants. That's what I thought when I looked out the window. Nothing but peasants on the street below. Uneducated people. I watched as one of them gave birth. Immediately, she put her baby in a tree. There was a bees' nest there and the bees stung the baby. Even from up here I could hear the baby scream. The baby fell out of the tree. I think it broke a leg because it didn't move after that. The baby just cried and screamed and ate fig newtons. It bled too. A lot.

Slowly, I ate my Almond Joy bar.

Gweedo,...

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Thou wanted to enjoy his iced latte
Thou wanted to bring the mood down in this joint
Thou wanted these tourists to be gone
Be gone tourists!
Thou forsakes thee!
Tourists
Poseurs
Wanna bees
Beardos

Thou is the grumbly heart of your demise
Thou is real
Really real
So frightening

So fucking real

Thou is not on tourist maps
Pamphlets
Brochures

Thou will burn away all this fake tourist bullshit
Thou will bring the mood down
in
this
joint

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