Black and white. I couldn't believe Dad had done it again.
I know I'm lucky, I do. You can say I'm spoiled if you like, but it doesn't matter - I'd asked for ONE THING this Christmas, and it was colour.
I looked up at my father, tried to fake a smile, and said 'Thanks'. As soon as he turned away, I rolled my eyes, and unwrapped my next present.
A sweater. Great. I wondered what colour it was - if I went out wearing this and one of my friends actually GOT what she asked for and could see...
I'm lost.
The corn fields turned into and endless turning of green upon green, and I couldn't run because the leaves had become blades.
I've stopped walking. I've stopped screaming. Screaming only made me thirsty, and I even tried tearing a corn leaf to pieces to suck on something, anything. I tried to pull an ear and when I pulled the leaves back, a handful of black ear wigs fell onto my lap, pincher butts spread wide. I wiped them off and ran.
Something cut my upper arm.
I lay now, staring at the sky, it's gone from gray to...
As I sat on the edge of the meadow, I wondered if I'd been wasting my life. Yeah, I know, everybody thinks that. But not a day goes by when I don't leave projects undone, conversations unhad, stories untold.
And even now, there's so much I could do, but instead I stare at the horizon. I imagine butterflies, and wonder what simple lives they must have. No-- not simple, meaningless. Though I suppose the two are one and the same. After all, it's easy to get through a day when there's nothing you want to accomplish.
I lament the wasted...
I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead.
It occurred a while back, and while I was living, I thought it was pretty unfair. Most people get 60, 70 years of life. Enough people got 30 or 40 years of life.
I got 25. By the time you're 25, you're only finally getting your last degree, your first bit of experience, stepping over that last big stone in your path before you enter the real world. The one where you earn enough money to do...
Dancing, the camera so close, so infringing on the intimate margin between her face and his chest, she tore her gaze from the lens. Awkward, having two camera men so near.
She turned in his arms, leaned towards him and he lifted her by the waist, and she lifted her leg, forming the shape of a four.
On the stage again, the cameras rushed with her as she leapt across the stage. When she stopped and stood to her toes, a camera met her at eye level. She looked directly into the lens.
"Oh." The man's left eye, peeking from...
He ran into the room, his heart pounding, and his clothes soaking wet. Mrs. Hudson trailed in behind him, wringing her hands with anticipated concern.
"He just pushed passed me, Mister 'olmes!" she apologised. I nodded supportively and guided her elbow out of the room with whispered reassurances.
Our visitor immediately captured Holmes' attention. Remarkably for about a second more than his usual gaze would consume unannounced guests at 221b Baker Street.
"It's about m' small'oldin' Mr. 'olmes" he blurted out in what sounded like a Highlands accent. Possibly one of the smaller island settlements, I postulated. He did sound...
Away.
He'd escaped.
And not in the usual way.
Home from school at 7:30pm, another long day of detention for crimes uncommitted (who ever did anything really deserving detention – and when has detention been worse than the alternative. Questions he wrestled with with his head on his desk) – home long after sunset, he pressed his head against his pillow and cried.
The tears awoke the empathy of the waters in the room. His fishbowl grew stormy. A glass of water shuddered with tsunami. The poster of the ship on the wall erupted in gale and he could feel the lash...
"Do you like the cats, young one?"
Lilibit pressed her white, lacey gloved hand over her throat, "Yes, my Lord," she breathed. "I've always wanted to see them, since my childhood!"
Sajin laughed, the bells at the bottom of his robes jingled, "You are a child yet, Little One."
Lilibit scowled, "I am a young woman. At the very least. I am not a child."
"Do you feel such?" Sajin asked, squinting, his dark skin shining from cheek to forehead in the way everyone did in this humid, emerald land. Lilibit for her part, felt sweat from head to toe...
TWIST.
The World Is Still Turning.
It was months after the destruction. We knew it was coming so we headed to the shelters that our grandfather had dug, in the deep mountains. We went in and closed the doors, sealing out the world and sealing ourselves inside.
Eventually, cabin fever struck. We decided that living like rats, in a hole, was not acceptable. We had to know what was going on.
We opened the seals and felt the rush of truly, fresh air. Everything outside looked the same. We decided to venture out to see what was what.
Part way,...
The maple leaves will change and fall with a certain grace - November will begin.
Carla read that sentence in her Literature textbook over and over, and the thought that kept running through her mind was, 'Who edited this book?'
That wasn't entirely true, but her internal monogue ran along these lines. Was she the only tenth grader who knew that semicolons connected independant phrases? Older people complained about how texting was ruining the language, but what difference did that make when a text book author, in what she assumed was an edited textbook ILLUSTRATING the language, couldn't even catch...