As per usual, our conversation lasted two words:
"Hey"
"Hi"
And that was it for the rest of the day.
I can't explain it. It's not like we were friends or acquaintances, or even enemies although some might've described our relationship as such. We certainly had a bit of an obsession with one another, but whether it was in a negative or positive way (one can {and will} argue that obsession is never a positive thing) I can't be sure.
But everyday was the same; walk in, greet each other, and stare from the corners of our eyes.
It wasn't...
Martin put the off-white china mug to his thin lips and took a long drink of his rapidly cooling coffee. His eyes scanned over the classified ads for the hundredth time but, once again, there was nothing. Nothing in his field, nothing in his area, nothing, nothing, nothing. The pen poised in his right hand tapped against the page angerly and he took another mouthful, swishing the lukewarm liquid between his cheeks.
"Good morning, pumpkin." Candice's bare feet padded along the bare hardwood behind him, and Martin soon found his girlfriend's arms wrapped tightly around his chest, her face buried...
Nothing here that means anything other than dust and time stretching out.
We are the expression of the infinite
The unknowable
Behind our eyes - depths unthinkable
ineffable
We are sons and warriors, clerks and middle men. Heartbreaking failure, transcendant triumph.
We crowd about this nothing, this dust shaped void. we are the forms and the edge of the void that is the whole.
We are singing you home.
My grandma had this incredible house. Like one of the ones you see in movies. Like, this is going to be a really crazy example, but did you ever see "The Tigger Movie"? Like Winnie the Pooh. There's this part where they're in the attic and I always remember wishing we had an attic with all that cool old stuff to explore in our house. Then I found Grandma's attic and I knew I'd hit something special! There was actually a stand-up mirror covered in a sheet and a few large trunks full of old clothes! So great.
I think...
TWIST.
The World Is Still Turning.
It was months after the destruction. We knew it was coming so we headed to the shelters that our grandfather had dug, in the deep mountains. We went in and closed the doors, sealing out the world and sealing ourselves inside.
Eventually, cabin fever struck. We decided that living like rats, in a hole, was not acceptable. We had to know what was going on.
We opened the seals and felt the rush of truly, fresh air. Everything outside looked the same. We decided to venture out to see what was what.
Part way,...
I am plastic.
Three years ago, I went to Hawaii (a big rock in the middle of the ocean) with a rock on my finger. I came back with sunburn, razor burn, and a too-tight gold band that cut my finger right below the big rock.
Two years ago, my birthday present was breast implants. I guess they look okay. After I healed, we had sex and he said, "Huh, they don't feel so great. Look nice, though."
I'm here, I guess. I don't know if I ever was. I've been wearing lipstick since eleven and stuffing my bra since...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
Twice, in Singapore, she sat by a fountain.
Three times, in Kuala Lumpur, at three different locations, she waited by Banyan trees.
She was waiting. Always waiting.
She was waiting for me.
She didn't know that I knew that she was waiting for me, but enough money, in the right pockets, can keep me out of trouble. *Has* kept me out of trouble for the past four years. Kept me out of her hands. Out of the hands of the people who wanted to find me....
f18000. that was what he was being paid for murder. She'd seen to much. She was the key to blowing the case wide open. He scanned the crowded mall, looking for the face in the photo. He spotted it, and reeled back in surprise. She was just a teenager, barely old enough to drive. He pulled himself together, then put the newly loaded gun back in his waistband. He tracked the victim out of the mall and into the parking lot. She was completely oblivious, laughing and talking with her friends. She said good bye and made her way across...
”Beware the Bwgan Fawr.” the old Vicar sighed. “Every chapel has to have its ‘Ysbryd capel’…”
“Its chapel ghost?” the younger clergyman replied. His pronunciation was still more ‘gog’, more Northern, than the man he was replacing felt comfortable with. Too… foreign. If such a phrase could be used for a fellow Welshman.
A shame, his body was found the morning after his first Midnight Mass. Just outside the chapel door, lying as if it had carried a great weight across the threshold, and then collapsed with the release of his burden. A heart attack, they said. Strange in someone...
Dispossessed
All he had to his name was this park bench, and not even that.
As he sat and gazed off into the distance, he contemplated his fate. He'd lost his job, then his home, then his family. Nothing was left to him, not even his body that lay six feet under rotting in a pauper's grave. His spirit sat on the bench that the shelter had dedicated to his memory. Suicide had not ended his suffering. Dispossessed of everything he had held dear, he contemplated getting his life back.
His ex-wife stood looking at the bench, at his name...