Mannequin legs hanging from the wall. Nailed by the heels, they create the effect of being suspended in space. I don't know why I did it, but somehow, they comfort me being there, detached from all body and context, the pink ballet shoes seamlessly blending into the leggings and the beige wall. This is my world, this is the inside of my mind - a single flat line, drab, unstimulating. Seeing more vibrant colors, seeing the artificiality of "beauty," seeing a well-crafted world - nothing makes me more angry. My nothing is a word unto itself.
Ben and Jessica are...
The gate closed behind them. Like a thunderous blast of insecurity they were shunned, abolished, removed from the society that their father so desperately tried to control. Sarah turned, taking hold of her younger sisters hand and began walking, but she wouldn't move.
"Damnit, c'mon Michelle! They've thrown us out, our dumbass father screwed up, and now we're the ones paying for it!"
"But daddy was trying so hard, he only wanted to help-"
Sarah slapped Michelle across the face, tears breaking fourth along side the ear shattering sound of flesh smashing into flesh.
"Dad messed up, he died, and...
"Helluva storm, Joe," I say.
"Ayup," he says shakily, gazing out into the fog. His uniform is wet through and he's a-startin' to tremble. It won't be long before he can't hold on to the beam no more.
"Shore wish you ain't cut the riggin' there, Bob," says Dave. He's on the end, Dave is, hangin' tight to the canvas. A good gust o' wind gonna sweep him away.
"Oh yeah, everythin' be my fault," I complain. How was I to know? You tell me that. How was I to know the riggin' be the on'y way down?
"Too bad...
Cuthbert was a fairly average Crocodile, with the expected number of teeth and glinting eyes like two marbles set in his swarthy head. He was not a particularly happy Crocodile though, as he was kept in a pen in a tourist attraction, where he was made to jump fifteen feet in the air to obtain his dinner, which was invariably a raw, plucked chicken on the end of a long pole. He found this predictable, boring and undignified.
So, one day, like any other. When the crowd gathered to watch his feat, cameras and phones poised to record him springing...
Shape.
His kneaded the dough, enjoying it's firm elasticity beneath his fingers. Shape.
Celeste was like that. Firm. Yet pliable. She let him bend her to his will with little resistance. And god damn... she had a shape.
As he coaxed the dough into long snakes, visions of Celeste's creamy smooth skin flooded his memory. His hands worked on autopilot, braiding the challah loaf. What they really wanted to be doing was kneading her delicious rear end.
He loved the ripples each time he spanked her full bottom.
Shape. He admired his challah loaf.
Gradually. That's what the doctor tells me. Gradually I will get worse. My liver will gradually fail; my arthritis will gradually turn my hands crooked.
So gradually, you mean, I'm dying? Isn't that bullshit? Could there be something worse for me to hear? So gradually since the age of 13, I've been killing myself. That first drink, to the last, I "gradually" ruined my insides? All because my parents failed to tell me what drinking really does to you? So it's my fault that during summers, parties, college, and beyond, that I "enjoyed" my life while ruining it at the...
This wasn't supposed to happen. You weren't supposed to feel this way; about your mother-in-law. But didn't the saying go, if you wanted to know what your wife would look like in 30 years...and that was another thing. She only had another few years in her. Her husband wasn't giving it to her. I'm a goddamn octo-phile, he thought. Was that the word? But she was perfect -- an insurance commercial, the cover of Mature Living, hell, the centerfold.
"Theo, is everything all right, dear?" Theo had begun mumbling to himself.
"Yes, mom. I'll have another hot dog, if you...
Waves.
When I opened my eyes the image faded, something from a dream. The waves were pink, lapping against the beach and around my ankles. The pink was tinged with pale green, and the forms in the distance, all of them waist deep in the water were the last to delete from my waking memories.
I only remember one of the forms with clarity. One shoulder higher than the other, arms dangling at the sides, a feeble attempt to wave with the shorter arm.
There were tears in my eyes, and I ran my fingers through my hair, and I...
The first thing I noticed about him was the shapes his mouth made when he spoke. He spoke in a language I didn't understand, but his voice was gentle and flowed over the foreign words like a lullaby.
His hands made shapes, too; complementing the stories he was telling, drawing invisible pictures in the air. Those hands had told a thousand stories, I think, brought alive by the emotion in his eyes.
I held those hands as he told me his final story. I listened with my heart to what my ears could not understand. I let the shapes of...
The gate closed behind them. That was the last time they would see the outside world for a long time. They had to make a new life for themselves. It would be limited, of course, but you can get used to anything if you have to. Well, it's either that or give up. Josie asked her mother, 'Why are they doing this?' Her mother didn't know the answer. It was just as well. That knowledge would have been enough to turn her very soul black. It would never be suitable for an 8 year old child to hear. They went...