Time stopped the moment I recognized the driver. I clenched my fists and stepped back onto the curb but the car screeched to a stop and I knew he'd recognized me.
I could have run back into a building, found an exit into an alley. Instead I bolted into the middle of the street and froze on the crosswalk. My eyes met the driver's and I heard as if from a distance the honking horns and screams of cars and people.
My throbbing pulse sent cold pumps of blood through my body and my skin prickled, and my clothes dampened...
As Darvo walked into the glaring sunset on the western horizon ahead of him, he wondered to himself about the Yoga studio he passed by minutes ago. There were so many beautiful women in there doing flexible things that he knew that his own body was not capable of.
Darvo had actually passed by that same Yoga studio almost every day for the past six months when he took up a job as a salesman at the screen door factory next door.
Everytime he walked by, on his way home, he made a point to look inside the window of...
I hadn't been doing anything out of the ordinary, but what happened that day was definetly out of the ordinary. I was simply sitting at my kitchen table looking out the window at the busy morning street, when all of a sudden, everything stopped. Just like that, everything was frozen in its place. Everything - except me.
At first I panicked, the steady stream of worried thoughts interupting my unsettled feelings about the heart-wrenching break-up that had taken place between my boyfriend and I the night before. After a few moments, I stopped too, although, I was still able to...
Shannon sat up, her eyes wide open. She wasn't sure if she was awake or asleep. She looked around the room (dirty socks, cat puke in one corner, empty Miller cans, a laundry basket filled with clean clothes) and wished it was all unfamiliar. She looked at the man next to her. His back was smooth and tanned. A tiny mole winked at her from his left shoulder blade. She wished he was a stranger.
Shannon lay back down. The pillow was damp with sweat, her sweat. Had she been dreaming or coming out of a fever?
"Where are you...
Tom said my neck tasted of honey. When I told Jasper he laughed hysterically, dropping the crystal glass of champagne onto the thick white carpet. Snorting like a horse, slapping his black Parisian jeans, contorting his face like a fairground mirror image. I didn't think it was so funny but didn't say anything. I laughed too.
One thing that Jasper would never know about me is how lonely and disgusted I feel with myself when I tell him about Tom.
When I walked away from the car, turned back and waved at Tom who had wiped the condensation from the...
The farmer had just left, when the old woman paused scooping up the silver to ponder on his telling. "Blue eyes? Could have sworn they were brown."
She shrugged and lifted a loose board to join the fee with treasured cousins beneath the stair. A knock at the door left her breathless in the hurry to conceal her hoard.
"Who… who is it?" she wheezed. Rather than answer, the caller entered quickly and fell behind the door.
"It's about the eye drops." whispered the same maid as had visited before. "I'd put them in when the Mistress startled me. I...
When I took Peter his final cup of coffee of the day knowing that tomorrow he'll be somewhere special instead of his smelly flat, I had a strong conviction that I had made the right decision, even though it was unlikely anyone else would understand. That's because they didn't have the knowledge I did. Secret. Life changing. Extraordinary.
In the morning we walked downstairs to the waiting car, Peter was chatting merrily unware his life was going to change forever.
Meanwhile I was perplexed why I couldn't open the door to my padded cell. Peter would be scared in the...
I looked through my photo album, my fingers flipping the pages quickly, as I looked for that one photo.
There it was, towards the back.
I stopped and smiled.
I could still hear my voice demanding to have this photograph taken.
A woman stood to my right. Her smile shining with pride as her hand held mine. She had always been there for me. Almost as far back as I could remember now. I often thought of her as the source of my conscience because she always seemed to give advice that pointed to the moral north, but at the...
She had already been waiting for half an hour, her foot tap tap tapping its heel against the cold tiles. A quick glance up at the clock on the wall – an old, crotchety thing which spurted into life once every creaking minute – tells her nothing beyond the fact that she's more nervous mow that the last time she looked. He was supposed to be here; him, with his knowing smile and faux-nervous laugh. A small case sat by her side; it was battered and scuffed in only the way something truly loved can be, something that has been carried and...
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...