My father and I were lying on the beach wondering why the moon looked larger than usual. My father argued idly--something about the flat terrain and the empty skyline. "If we could see a house, or a tree, or a traffic light, it wouldn't look so big."
It was a stupid explanation, but we are not the kind of people who carry iPhones, and whip them out to settle any debate. We hate those people. They ruin everything.
We'd been drinking wine from the motel's paper cups. We'd run out of wine a long time ago, but occasionally we still...
0900 hrs. Scott was seen leaving his fiance's home by a neighbour who looked up as he slammed the door hard and swore loudly.
0930 hrs. CCTV shows Scott going to pay for gas and coming out with a large bag of sweets, getting back into his car and driving off
1100 hrs. Scott's employer Mick Davis calls the fiancee Deborah McVey to ask if Scott is coming into work.
1300 hrs. Deborah has called the police. Scott is missing. He had been depressed after the tragedy with his family.
1500 hrs. Scotts car found with the driver's door open,...
She sat waiting in her normal spot overlooking the city. He said he'd return to her one day, and though it hadn't happened yet, she wouldn't give up hope. He'd always been a man of his word, and a measly thing like death wouldn't change that.
When the accident claimed his life, ripped him from her, she thought she'd find a way to join him in the afterlife. But one thing he said before passing for good gave her hope. "Wait for me." She knew what he meant; where he meant. And so she waited every day for the past...
Okay, Mary. Don't panic. You've planned for this occasion. First, you've gotta find a way to contact your employer and let them know you'll be home sick today. Hopefully they still have phones in the future. Actually, first thing you've gotta do is look in the mirror and then find the date.
Wow, I haven't aged well at all. When did I let myself get so fat and wrinkly? What happened in college? Do I have kids? Hooboy.
Eureka! There's the office. Nice. It looks like computers are much more sleek. ACK! It powered on by itself. 2030? Holy crap,...
Please do not ask me to write some fluffy SciFi romance. Nothing will have changed by 2070. I will probably still be alive, I will probably still have this fucking job.
Remember when you hired me, based on the screenplay in my application? I worked hard on Zilly and Jack. For years, my every step was fueled by the thought of Zilly and Jack seamlessly executed on a Broadway stage. (A production, I mean, not a beheading.)
"Such wit!" you exclaimed. "Such cutting-edge quirks! We love the way Zilly listens to movie soundtracks while she studies BioChem! Dun Dun DUN!"...
In hindsight, the solution was obvious. Of course it was. It always is. But at the time it seemed like an impossible thing, a thing that would never be solved. A thing that would haunt her and taunt her forever and ever amen.
The crossword in Mrs Grey’s daily paper may not, to others,especially perhaps her husband, have seemed like much of an importance, but to her it was everything. It was the thing that, for just an hour or so each day, made her feel clever. It made her feel like a proper human being instead of the tired...
I think it's number nine. Eight maybe. All I know is my face is slightly tingled.
"Another," she asks as she walks past me.
I give an affirming nod. She has to know I am nearing my limit, but I have learned to play this off well.
"You had the Green Line, right?"
I nod again.
The Cubs are on, and they are losing. Nothing new there.
A couple sits in the corner talking about important couple things.
Two friends sit the right of me, discussing how much their lives and the Cubs suck.
The glass ends up in front...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She shielded her eyes from the flashes of light that arced across the blackened sky, her face soaked with tears, her heart pounding in her chest as the cacophony of noise rattled her skull.
In London, a family huddled together in a corner of their living room, across from the window that had blown itself out from the force of the first impact. They held between them the grandmothers crucifix, praying to their God as if he could save them.
A man stood atop the Eifel...
She found the key on the internet.
It seemed silly, a little, to buy a physical and tangible thing like that to open up a locked trunk in a dream. But it was necessary, she was sure. She'd been trying to get into the trunk in the bedroom of the house of doors - the house she returned to over and over again in her lucid dreams - for years. For as long as she could remember.
The trunk, solid and wooden, banded with brass and locked. It was impenetrable. She'd tried peering through the keyhole, picking the lock, everything....
The sky was blue, the grass was green and the little clouds were as fluffy as the picture in a child's reading book. All was well with the world. And on her swing, she could see above the park, above the neat hedges and the flowering bushes. She could, as she swung higher still, see over the row of terraced houses and into the street beyond. Over the flowering cherry trees and the neat gardens with their blossoming plants, over the heads of the middle class and middle aged gardeners and housewives and shoppers and busy bodies of the suburban...