Gene started thinking up missions. Find a tapedeck, sparklers, foam hats, and a Tears for Fears hat. Re-enact a concert in the parking lot of some three dollar hotel. Load the back of Dave's truck up with lawn furniture and mailboxes - whatever isn't tied down. Cut down all the trees on one block on the East side under the guise of city workers.
Gene fumbled with the cats. He hat taped their four tails together and begun the arduous process of spraypainting them gold when some three Spanish children skidded to a halt in front of Gene's yard. "Making...
They were listening.
That's what my mother always told me when I enquired about the two men sitting on the bench in the park.
Every Tuesday we would find them there, sitting as still as statues, seemingly staring straight ahead. My mother told me that they were blind and that that was why they never seemed to be looking at anything in particular.
She said that they listened so much because they couldn't see; that they took in double as much information through their ears. They were drinking in the sounds of children playing and dogs barking and couples walking...
They were listening. Annette had no problem reading a report in school to a classroom full of students who were busy catching up on homework, drawing doodles, or discreetly pulling out their cellphones when nobody was looking; but this was different.
This was in front of people who'd come voluntarily. People who /wanted/ to hear what she'd written. People who actually enjoyed talking about math in their free time. Weirdos.
And that's what scared Annette. They were listening. If she'd done poorly, they'd actually care. They had a passion for the subject that she'd hated, despite her natural talent. Why,...
Sophie stood at the window, the curtains snug around her shoulders,trailing behind like a dress, or veil. The sun was dipping down behind the trees across the way.
He should be home by now, she thought, chewing the already ravaged thumbnail on her right hand.
She thought about the fight they had the night before. How she had held onto the seeds of those feelings for so long they had germinated and grew and soon the roots were twisted around with her insides, and the branches and leaves moved with her arms.
The anger had grown and become parasitic. And...
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...
The dream had been wonderful, yet it would never be real.The first thing I did was tweet about it; hundreds of retweets showed I'd hit a nerve. Me, Christine, a twitter phenomenon. And all because I shared my dream (nightmare? No. Dream) of an ex-girlfriend becoming infected during the zombie apocalypse. Undead everywhere, and amongst them the bitch, at last, letting me have the final word.
Wish fulfillment with a chain saw, definitely severing our relationship. It had gone to her head. You had to hand it to her. Even with the plague, I still (for a moment) thought about...
The car stalled. The roads were half washed out and the rain pounded like a blacksmith's hammer on the hood. The storms began a few days ago, but before that it had been a dry summer. After the first downpour, people started smiling and stopped fanning their faces. Life strained under the drops in vegetable and flower gardens.
After the first whole nights of dark heavy clouds, the constant grumble of thunder, people were still trying to be positive. Good for the forests, dry as tinder, they'd say. The river was too low anyway.
After a week and flooded basements,...
He sat in the truck parked on the gravel drive, his arm hanging out the window, a cigarette dangling from his finger. The radio was on and Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses was blaring.
She watched him from the behind the closed screen door.
He lowered the visor so she wouldn't be able to see his reddened eyes. Def Lepard's Pour Some Sugar On Me came on next, and he tweaked the volume nob. He could tell she was still looking at him.
He finished his cigarette and flicked it out the window. He took a long drink from the...
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...
I remember when I first saw you. You were walking alone in a park, it was a cool evening it was so late that even the night walkers were in a bed, There you were walking alone in the park, skin fair hair so blonde it was almost white. You wore nothing but a patient's gown. I walk up to you concerned then frightened, you my dearest lamb were covered in a crimson tint. Do you remeber what you asked me you said "help me"
~