She was the most delicate girl in town. Small, pixieish, with willowy limbs and and small features placed evenly on her round face. She dressed delicately, too, with long, floaty skirts and light fabrics such as cotton and lace. She seemed to float when she walked, flicking her skirts and jumping lightly, like a fawn. But her eyes were, well, disturbing. electric green, with long, slit, vertical pupils, like a cat's. I wondered who she was, and where she came from. But one day, she just, dissapeared. Not a trace of her was found. one day, they found her at...
Waves. Waves lapping at the scarred coast line, the sound of gulls cooing above, the smell of the salty seawater.
The therapist had told her to imagine her happy place, every time she felt a panic attack coming on. Every time she felt stressed, which she was prone to, she came back here.
Her happy place.
She was nine years old, her strawberry blonde hair in pigtails, her jade green coat pulled tight to keep out the bitter wind. Balancing atop a weather warn log, she had pretended she was walking the tightrope at the circus.
She had always dreamt...
In these parts, they could not afford trains. Instead, they strapped the Jews and leftists and gypsies and cripples and social undesirables onto sleds on the back of a Volkswagen and hauled them to the camp, which was really a slapdash cardboard affair. The guards were lazy and disinterested. They really didn't see a point in the whole thing, but they did their jobs nevertheless, smoking cigarettes with the more gregarious prisoners. They resented the prisoners and beat them - After all, they thought, why should I have to waste my life standing around guarding these people that the Reich...
My mother loved colour. She spent the last weeks of her life in a hospital bed, with its monotone greys and whites. People gave her all kinds of gifts and cards. But her favourite one was a bright purple robe with pink stitching.
That gift was from me. Truth is, I'm more of a tactile person. Yet I knew this was what she craved most--her two favourite colours in the world.
At her funeral, we released balloons in pink and purple. Or, rather, everyone else did. I held onto mine. I wasn't ready to let her go yet.
Today, though,...
Sal couldn't breathe. And he couldn't stand running through a huge group of people. They didn't have much to hurry for. Some of them were walking calmly to trains, while others were meeting thier loved ones after riding in on one.
He was the only idiot in the place litteraly pushing through people. He would have to apologize to the old lady with the walker he knocked flat on her butt later. Right now, Karen was his main focus.
Karen. She left Salvadore a message on his answering machine. Something about leaving him, because she couldn't keep playing house anymore....
I used to feel like a bird in flight
I would cut between the trees
and see the clouds from upside-down
I would pull up to the top
of skyscrapers and hop
along their ledges
My silhouette against the moon
My reflection in the harbor
Yeah, I used to feel like a bird in flight...
The world is a thin, hollow place.
One wrong step, and you break through the shell, and you go tumbling, tumbling down.
It is oft repeated to students that an exam is not the be all and end all in their lives, that many opportunities await all in this bountiful land of plenty.
These words are reassuring, it gives hope, and puts your life into place in comparison to all the many other people in the world, with no opportunity to even sit an exam. In some ways, it makes you feel lucky for your high, pedestalled position.
Until you...
The first few days she hadn't noticed the bars. She'd noticed very little about her surroundings other than that they were wrong. As her head became less fuzzy and she began to understand why they were wrong, that this wasn't where she was supposed to be she tried to learn everything there was to learn about this unfamiliar environment.
It was on the tenth day that she'd counted, that the sun shone for the first time. Whereas it had looked grey and dreary outside, the glowing sunlight made it look full of possibilities. The bars were on the inside of...
The anti-grav boots were worth every penny.
Shelly had saved for weeks, mowing lawns, delivering papers, collecting coins from every cushion in the house, to earn enough hard cash to buy them. Her mother had told her not to waste her money, that they were probably just galoshes with springs on the bottom, but the girl refused to be deterred. The magazine ad had proclaimed them anti-grav, and there was a Truth in Advertising law on the books, so they must be the real deal.
And she was right.
But not in the way she thought she would be.
Instead...
"Constellation of freckles."
I made a face. "Oh, that's going on the list."
She nodded with a degree of authority - she hadn't needed me to tell her it belonged on our list of paticularly purple prose, our list of phrases that were to be avoided at all costs.
"Can you even get a constellation of freckles?"
"Well, of course you can, it's an arrangement - it's the implication I resent. That freckles are like stars - who'd have starry freckles? You can't wish on a freckle."
"You could. I think that could be quite a romantic scene."
"Depends on...