She leaned over, sideways from her stool, all tits and lips and curly hair falling in his direction.
"Got a light," she asked, sticking a cigarette in the corner of her painted mouth.
He set his beer down, just foam left and dug into his right pocket. Pulled out a lighter and slid it across the plywood painted like mahogany bar. She looked at the lighter, and moved her lips into a pout. Leaned in even closer and said "A gentleman would light it for me."
"You're in the wrong place if you're looking for gentlemen," he grunted, looking straight...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
"I must protest!" she shouted, above the din of the room.
The man at the other side looked at her quizically. "Miss Whitely, would you please sit down? You're not allowed to speak out until it's your turn in the witness stand."
"But this man is slandering me! I never did any of those things!"
"Miss, that's how court works. They tell their story, and you tell yours."
"But it's wrong!"
The prosecutor sighed. This was going to be a long...
Her breath rose from her body in swirls of ash. The air wheezed from her as you would expect the air would travel through a burnt husk of a body. Each night she burned, crumbling into herself, waking in a bright fury with the morning sun. Some called her a phoenix, a goddess of the volcano, Pelée.
I was a lowly stream, trembling, trickling in her wake. The heat of her caused my innards to boil, and the creatures would leave me. The earth heaved with her breath, the tumbling rocks rolling, the sparks floating away with the grace of...
Excerpt from personal diary, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2010:
Experiments designed to give self artificial sexual fetish involving lamps have thus far resulted in failure. First attempted to insert lamp into arbitrary orifice; however this failed due to how cumbersome the lamp in question was. Perhaps there is a non-penetrative alternative?
Excerpt from personal diary, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2010:
Attempted masturbation while entertaining thoughts of the lamp. So far unable to sexualize the object itself, and thus unable to complete experiment. Will try again with different parameters tomorrow.
Excerpt from personal diary, Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010:
The lamp wouldn't turn on....
The lamp wouldn't turn on. Off, yes. around, yes. But on, absolutely not. No matter how many times he flipped the switch, no matter how many times he prodded it, shook it, swung it over his head, he could not get it to turn on. He decided to coax it. First he offered it things that humans like: chocolate, love and affection, sex. The lamp did not budge. Then he offered it things that his cat liked: mackerel, catnip, a laser. Nothing. He tried reasoning with it, but the lamp was dead to his entreaties. Look, he explained, you staying...
One foot in front of the other. He had to keep going. There was no turning back.
They almost caught up with him several times. In the woods he'd tripped over a branch, sprawled, and felt their hot breath on his back just before he kicked off and escaped. Now he was in the clear, wide open spaces of the school's football field. No obstructions in his path. No cover or refuge in sight.
On foot in front of the other. If he could just keep running for another mile or so, he could make it to the church where...
Snitches Die Heroically, the Rest Burn in Hell
October 2002. As the flames ripped apart the body of a five year old girl, burning her skin into a mass of molten cellular plastic, boiling the red and white blood cells that traversed her barely formed veins, charring her fragile, yet to be developed bones, and exterminating the intelligence, wit, and beauty of a child who never had the chance to be; our generation looked on and cheered. While the firefighters rushed to squelch the blaze and douse the embers of dying justice, we arrogantly proclaimed the righteousness of this row-home...
"She'd have preferred the electric chair," Melanie said.
A half grin sat on her lips as she stirred the crinkle fry in the ketchup far longer than anyone stirs crinkle fries in ketchup.
"You know when they were discovering the electric chair, they would like pay kids to bring in stray dogs and cats to electrocute to get the voltage just right," Beloved said.
"That's horrible," Melanie replied and she dropped the crinkle fry. "Why would you say that?"
"They finally tested it on an elephant!" Beloved said.
"Wait, who is they?" Melanie asked. She lifted her nose in the...
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...
£18000 was how much it was going to cost to get him out of jail. Such is the price for public indecency in front of the queen.
It wasn't even that it was so...indecent. It was more along the lines of public infantilism. We'd both been to London before, and we had done all the touristy things, all the things that young men with wild oats were desperately in need of doing, but this time, Adam took it too far.
Adam, he of the propensity for humping things, took one look at the Royal Guard, and in a moment of...