The ghost girls kept appearing on the photographs. Even on the really old one of my grandfather.
I wasn't that concerned, it was bound to be an effect of those new pills from the doctor. The leaflet had a million and one side effects including hallucinations.
On my seventy first birthday all the family were round my house and I was just blowing out the candles on the three level chocolate cake when there was a pounding on the door.
Police.
They took me into the kitchen and closed the door. Sparing the rest of the family the embarasssment of...
Heavy midnight. The crawl of the planchette under our fingertips. The triptych was coming alive. One creature sprang from the painted panel. A beast, horned and elephantine, illuminated by the moon through the cellar window.
It spoke to us through the board:
“Extradimensional bovine dreamfeeders graze upon fronds that sprout from the heads of sleepers. These dreams—long, lush, iridescent fancies rooted in neuronic soil and flowering up into the night—are their food.
“The beasts lumber through a meadow of musing at night, their jaws drooling plasmic sludge, their snorts ruffling moppet heads from across the chasm of dimension. They pass...
She'd have preferred the electric chair, at least that one bloody moved. She could get up a good speed on that one, maybe she could get out of it, escape their sympathetic looks. It was bad enough losing the power in your legs without their condescending looks. Idiots.
Apparently it was a "power chair", but, frankly, bollocks to that. Jokingt that she was living out a death sentence was one of her few pleasures left - that terror in their eyes, the "oh god how do we respond to that" was what she was living for right now.
Actually, that...
The water was clear but her conscience was not.
Carla gazed into the crystal goblet's depths, the sparkling liquid reflecting the sunlight that filtered through the kitchen's old fashioned windows. It was one of the things that originally attracted them to the old, refurbished barn. The glass irregular, thicker at the bottom, letting the natural light unevenly through its depths, like the sun seen from underwater.
Carla smiled at the memory. They had been happier then. Happy and in love and carefree, despite the financial uncertainty of starting a new life together. But they had scrimped and saved for their...
The lamp wouldn't turn on.
Strange, she thought, I just changed the bulb yesterday.
Feeling her way through the dark living room, Camille passed into the dining area and saw the stairs leading to the second floor were lit with tiny tealights. Following them up, she called out, "John?" No answer. A little louder, "John, are you home?." At the top of the landing, more candles lit a path from the stairs and into the hallway. Camille started down the hall but paused when she passed the closed bathroom door. Thinking John might be inside the bomb shelter-like walls, she...
It was inexplicable that two latino, hipster twenty-somethings from East Los Angeles would talk like 85-year-old Jewish retirees from Queens, yet that was how it was.
"Pull ovah and ask fuh direck-shuns," shouted Isabel.
"I know where I'm going!" Ricky replied with a Yiddish accent that seemed to come from nowhere. "You always do this! You always want to undermine my AUTHORITY!"
He exclaimed very loudly, mostly because he was hard of hearing and couldn't monitor his own pitch. Isabel was silent for a second, silently mouthing words to herself. Then, as if in an afterthought, she said, "You just...
They had forgotten to close the window flap on the tent the night before. It was early morning now, and the light had started to come in; a cool, damp air had already come in and settled into the corners.
She had been awake for about 20 minutes, annoyed by the light that irritated her even through her closed eyelids. Michael was curled up in the corner, half in his sleeping bag with one leg hanging out. His shirt was undone and had spilled open, and even now he smelled like booze. His bandage had bled through the night and...
Atop a ferris wheel the poor anxious squirrel found himself above the world far far away from the comfort of his tree and pile of nuts. As the wheel spun behind him, Mr. Squirrel ran ahead trying to keep up as he felt with every turn he would fall. As he lost ground he noted ascending higher and farther away from the ground. 'A telephone pole... a cable... a branch?' he thought could perhaps bring him to safety. When suddenly a gush of wind caused his tiny claws to slip across the rusty painted metal and he slipped. Falling, falling,...
The contours of her form were clear under the light shining through my window. She was laying there nude on my couch as I drew her. My eyes, flicking back and forth from the paper to her. My hand, gliding wildly across the paper in motions similar to a snake whipping it's way across a desert. I had asked her to model for me. Not because I have a crush on her. Not because I'm trying to date her. But because her body is so gorgeous. It flows with every move she makes, twisting and bending and flowing. She lays...
Iridescent, the water moved silently over her head as her toes grazed the soft sand beneath her. In an equilibrium, almost floating but almost standing, she let the water raise her arms. This was limbo.
People always said it was best to keep your feet on the ground, so to speak. When the mind wanders, ideas get lost. Was that the way it really worked, the woman wondered, exhaling and releasing small bubbles of her life-breath into the water. The bubbles traveled upward to the surface, releasing her breath for her over her head. It was true, water made you...