I met him on the beach. He sat, fully clothed, legs ajar with a cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth, ash dropping sullenly, almost petulantly into the faded crotch of his blue jeans. His eyes were a-glaze, his raybans askew and he hadn’t seem to notice me sitting down beside him.
It was night. Behind us various Reggaeton tunes blared from various speakers, set outside the rows and rows of cocktail shacks at the side of the beach, all selling cheap and strong and just how we liked to drink it. The sky was jet and pinpricked with...
She opened the envelope and screamed. Then she opened the next envelope, screamed, set it down. Then the next, screamed, set it down. Next, screamed, down. Next, screamed, down.
A strange ritual. Letting out some kind of pent up anger and frustration. She had drawn a crowd, as one letter after another would be opened, followed by a scream, then the laying down of the envelope. For hours on end she did exactly the same thing. Open, scream, down. Soon, the crowd had grown quite large. The police arrived, and stood for a few minutes, watching this bizarre ritual. One...
It started as a joke.
Ralph was one of the few people at the camp who had a vehicle, who had a vehicle that was heavy enough to roll through the massive amounts of snow that often fell here over the course of an entire winter, and whose vehicle was actually fit enough to start on a cold morning.
Sally had a sled. She had a sled and a length of rope, and one day thought that it would be amusing to tie the length of rope to Ralph's bumper and let Ralph take her for a ride. Though Ralph...
The disco ball was turning whilst paramedics worked on the bodies. It was the worst ever disaster they had encountered inside a club. Tiny mirror squares reflected human carnage, twisted metal, unrecognizable things beyond possible description.
The public were told an explosion caused the building to collapse inwards trapping everyone including the emergency crews. Dreadful tragedy. Months of mourning.
Dan a fourteen year old hacker managed to get into a computer that isn’t supposed to exist. His parents listed him missing hours after he posted the truth on the internet - that all survivors of the explosion were killed on...
I jumped clear out of my skin, I did. Well, I wasn't es'pectin' him to come creepin' up behind me all quiet-like! Nearly gave me a heart attack, I warrant. It's like I always said; that boy's gonna get his self in a heap a trouble if he don't shape up an' learn his self some manners. Come girl! What's got you all google-eyed out the window? OOooohhh no. No, no. It just ain't right; you givin' him so much of the good Lord's precious day as you do. Come away from that window now, girl. That's not a good...
Goodnight...read the glowing sign above my bedroom door.
I shoveled myself further under the covers and sat with my flashlight, curled in my tiny igloo, my fortress of solitude, catching up on the secret stash of comics that I had hidden in the back of my closet.
I'd read sometimes until the flashlight flickered, in need of more juice from the cheap batteries I'd buy at the store with leftover lunch money. I'd fall asleep squinting my eyes so tight that I couldn't make out shapes on a page, and I'd wake up early to wash the sweaty inkstains from...
So close, yet so far. Matey the Pirate never understood the phrase until these last few days of his life. The woodpecker would get closer and closer to the nub that was left of his leg, chipping away at the wooden peg that was left. He had to make it to shore. The ship was not going to last. The gapping hole in the bottom was filling the ship with too much water. This all meant that Matey would have to float to shore. Alone, he had not enough buoyancy to make it. In such a situation he though could...
I awoke, pissed, the activity, not the feeling, took a shower, got dressed, made coffee, drank the coffee, fed the dog, the fish, the cat, watered the plants, left a note for the cleaning people, heard a story on NPR that made me think of you, began to write a poem about the us we were, before we became the non-us, still it felt good to think of you, your smile, shoes, the way you opened your eyes after they were closed in the aftermath of our coupling, when we were a couple, it turned me on, I went back...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
"Malcolm, what are you doing?" The teacher frowned slightly.
"They're not freaks," she said, quiet but emphatic. "And they're not faking for attention. It's not a disorder, and it's not an illness. It's just a way of being."
The words had been running through her head for the past twenty minutes as the teacher had started talking about gender identity disorder, in which people didn't identify with the biological sex that they were born into.
"I'm sorry, Malcolm, but it's in...
The ocean, the land, the bridge. These are the metaphors of my life. I stand on sinking ground, toes curled against the tension of the the surf and sand, the give and take, the conquest and retreat. Submerge into eternity or hold my ground a while longer?
There is, of course, the bridge. The mediator. It arches over the rivals, dipping into one, clutching the hands of the other. It's base is mossy, cool, a fuzzed pillar for fish to dart around. It's back is hot, sunbaked.
The bridge is the holder of peace. It is the symbol of one....