Her joints screamed as the winter chill ran through her veins and iced her skin. It was so cold out and this blizzard was never-ending.
Julia huddled around the oven pumping heat into the 500 square-foot apartment, something her mother said to never do but it's not like the heat worked.
"Why the hell did I go out there?" Julia said aloud to the appliances.
She threw Ryan out for a reason but months of anticipation made the actual act much harder. She wasn't even sure if it was going to be today, but in the end it was. He...
I am the apple of her eye.
All of them in fact.
I have five aunts, and a mother.
Mom calls me the Little King, her little Emperor, the man of the house. Where is my father? I don't know or care.
My aunts have always been there. Mom defied everyone when she got pregnant, as far as I know my aunts have never been courted.
They are my court. They laugh at my jokes, they bring me snacks, they make me cocoa, they run my baths. When I write stories they print them and paste them in a book,...
One foot in front of the other. He had to keep going. There was no turning back.
They almost caught up with him several times. In the woods he'd tripped over a branch, sprawled, and felt their hot breath on his back just before he kicked off and escaped. Now he was in the clear, wide open spaces of the school's football field. No obstructions in his path. No cover or refuge in sight.
On foot in front of the other. If he could just keep running for another mile or so, he could make it to the church where...
Gradually.
That was the secret, wasn't it? Build up their trust or indifference, either one would do, like in that fable about the mouse and the lion. First it was hello over the mail as they each made their way back to their separate apartments, next? Why, after months of chit chat, it was coffee shared in the buildings laundrymat. More chance meetings, more talk about incidentals, info on her fake bio. There was no need for him to learn of her unpleasant past. He would only get the wrong idea.
It wasn't really lying, not when she was honest...
The rock where my sister died dominated the landscape like a giant defrocked mushroom.
My parents were standing beside me, waiting for my response as I looked up at the seaweed and the striations. I wasn't sure what they wanted me to feel.
"It's cold," I said.
"We were just up on that ledge," said mom. "The tide was coming in, but the sun was setting and we wanted to watch it."
"Thought we'd just wade back to shore afterwards," added dad.
"But I lost my balance and slipped. Pregnancy does that to you sometimes, messes with your inner ear....
I know, I know, there's a million things I need to do. Every day, a million things. Check this, talk to him, to her. Don't forget to fill this out. Drive there, don't forget. Get it right the first time so you don't lose more time doing it twice. Or worse.
Only at the end of the day, is it legal to relax. Only when the world is on half-time, lunch break, dinner break, time out, penalty box.
The sun is one big green light for everyone. You can't stop when the world is go.
If I didn't want to...
When I was twelve, I went to sea with my father. My mother had protested out of worry saying that I was not yet ready for the trials of life at sea, but once she had been persuaded to allow me to go, I went with excitement behind my eyes and the song of the gulls ringing in my ears.
I remember the very first time I set foot on the deck of my father's small sailing ship. I instantly fell in love with it. The clear blue waves, the crisp air, and the reflections in the polished wood...
It was white. That was something that was abnormal about the entire situation. What was not something that one thought of when being beaten.
He wondered if perhaps it was heaven trying to tell him that he was closer than he though. He hoped that it was finally the light at the end of the tunnel, but when the next blow from the stick hit him across the back, he knew he had no such luck.
A small well of blood slowly came up his throat. It almost felt like a terrible hiccup to him. One of those hiccups that...
“Pob lwc.” the elder of Saint Joseph’s had wished me, after his strange warning. I presumed he meant for my first Mass to be held, as traditional, at Midnight on Christmas Eve. It went well, the service, with a fuller than expected attendance, to see the ‘new man’, I presumed.
Later, sat still in just the candle light, I sighed, thinking I’d found a final home. It was then that the Bwgan Fawr sighed too. A man of middling years, he seemed, from one of the middling centuries, but as translucent as chip paper fat.
He pointed at the great...
"And they thought that was porn?"
"I don't think they would have called it that. Erotica, maybe. But...yes. There's something so innocent about it, isn't there? I love the kimono on this lady here."
"I can't believe you're looking at the kimino."
"This isn't your late-night shocker, this isn't your gorey pop-up nonsense. This is - I suppose it isn't classy as such, but it's... There's something about it. It's old fashioned. Charming in its way."
"They had very different ideas then."
"The world wasn't sexualised, I suppose. Seeing half a naked woman was shocking enough. We're just looking for...