Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She was the last surviving member of the Yoshi Crew, a band who had until recently been quite the rage amongst the in-crowd of Berlin. Her devil-may-care attitude and foul mouth had won her a place in the hearts and minds of Berlin's anti-establishment, anti-casual, anti-everything crowd. In Beijing, things had gone more than a little wrong. Mechmal, the under-fed, over-exaggerated singer had found them a gig at a nightclub in the centre of Beijing's equivalent of Soho as they worked their way around the world....
It was the fall that surprised me the most.
The winter, she was fine. Spring, slowly getting sick, Summer, even sicker.
In fall, she fully recovered from stage 3 liver cancer. There was someone to thank. God or someone.
It could have been the praying, or just hoping we didn't lose her. She was only 7. 7-year-olds aren't supposed to just die from liver cancer. Ella's better now, though. It's easy to believe in something when a dying child makes a full recovery from something so evil as that.
So God, or someone, thank you. It was God or someone...
"One scoop chocolate, one scoop..."
"Let me guess, vanilla." the man behind the counter grinned at me.
Was I really so predictable? I felt the colour rise to my cheeks.
"Erm..."
"I was right. I remember." he threw his head back and laughed.
"Actually..."
"2.53 every afternoon. One scoop chocolate and one scoop vanilla. Like clockwork."
He was starting to annoy me now.
"Actually, I was going to ask..."
I stopped. I was going to ask for vanilla. Truth is I only like vanilla and chocolate ice cream. Always have. But now I had started something. Alex was right, I...
I couldn't sleep with her next to me. i was half scared that she would just disapear, it had been so long since we had been here like this and I could hardly beleive it was real. I just wanted to watch her, soak in every last detail of this moment I knew couldn't last.
I wanted to remember how her hair fanned on the pillow. Some might liken it to a halo, but to me it seemed more like a lion's mane. I wanted to remember how she smelt, how her chest gently rose and fall as she slept,...
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...
Snitches Die Heroically, the Rest Burn in Hell
October 2002. As the flames ripped apart the body of a five year old girl, burning her skin into a mass of molten cellular plastic, boiling the red and white blood cells that traversed her barely formed veins, charring her fragile, yet to be developed bones, and exterminating the intelligence, wit, and beauty of a child who never had the chance to be; our generation looked on and cheered. While the firefighters rushed to squelch the blaze and douse the embers of dying justice, we arrogantly proclaimed the righteousness of this row-home...
"This is your fault," his wife said to him. If you would just put your mother in her place I wouldn't have to and we wouldn't be fighting right now.
He replied loudly, "My fault? How is it my fault she's nosy? She doesn't mean anything by it anyway. You don't have to be such a bitch about every little thing."
"Oh. My. God. Seriously?" She was on a roll now. "It's your fault she's so nosy because you never say anything at all to her when she crosses a line. And once again, I wouldn't have to be such...
She sat staring at the skin of her hands. Her eyes traced the many lines, imagining the skin to be the brown, scorched earth of deserts, thirsty for life.
The wrinkled skin gathered above her enlarged knuckles, reminding her of dried fruit.
She continued examining her hands, wondering how the finiteness of life had come to suddenly feel so tangible.
Her veins somehow looked foreign. Her age had caused her veins to become like strange, throbbing, river-like threads of yarn, sewn to her flesh, invading her hands.
She rubbed the underside of her index finger against the rough surface of...
I looked at the passport, and then back up at the woman standing in front of me.
"Are you serious?" I asked, a puzzled look on my face.
She looked sad.
"What is to be funny?" she said, her broken English somehow endearing.
"I don't know how they do things in..." I turned her passport over, and looked at the country name listed. It took up three lines, and many of the letters just looked like squiggles to me. "...your home country, but over here we do things differently."
"Is me!" she smiled, and I felt my tough exterior melting...
Excerpt from personal diary, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2010:
Experiments designed to give self artificial sexual fetish involving lamps have thus far resulted in failure. First attempted to insert lamp into arbitrary orifice; however this failed due to how cumbersome the lamp in question was. Perhaps there is a non-penetrative alternative?
Excerpt from personal diary, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2010:
Attempted masturbation while entertaining thoughts of the lamp. So far unable to sexualize the object itself, and thus unable to complete experiment. Will try again with different parameters tomorrow.
Excerpt from personal diary, Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010:
The lamp wouldn't turn on....