The water was clear but her conscience was not.
Carla gazed into the crystal goblet's depths, the sparkling liquid reflecting the sunlight that filtered through the kitchen's old fashioned windows. It was one of the things that originally attracted them to the old, refurbished barn. The glass irregular, thicker at the bottom, letting the natural light unevenly through its depths, like the sun seen from underwater.
Carla smiled at the memory. They had been happier then. Happy and in love and carefree, despite the financial uncertainty of starting a new life together. But they had scrimped and saved for their...
I'm with stupid remarked the t-shirt. Very appropriate I thought considering the look on his face as he and his friend harried the younger boy. I wanted to step in but I had always shied away from confrontation. "If it gets and worse I'll step in" I told myself, hoping it wouldn't. In my reverie I never noticed who pulled the knife not that that mattered much, the result was still the same. He must have been stupid to have carried it with him.
"You don't like her, do you?"
"I don't have to."
He glanced at her, although kept his eyes on the road. "You have to try."
"Really, my feelings towards her don't matter, what matters is that you like her, and she likes you." Her feathers were ruffled now as she looked out of the window, most decidedly not at him. "Besides. I am trying."
"Then maybe you should try harder."
They didn't speak, the sounds of the engine the only thing keeping them from awkward silence.
"The others all like her."
"I don't have to like everyone - "
"You...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. His hair is dark. He just stands there watching. I call out to him asking his name, but he doesn't reply. He just stares.
A can't take my eyes off of him. I stand there too, staring at him. Our deep eyes meet and a chill flashes down my spine. As I gaze into the windows to his soul, my breathing quickens as does my heart beat. Here we are, two different entities separated only by the distance of a metre or so. I can't describe the deep dread I feel...
The children were not at school. It was an odd feeling. This freedom was what they had longed for, begged for every school night since forever. To be freed from school for as long as they wanted, to be allowed to play video games all day, to eat chocolate for breakfast and ice-cream for lunch and to make as much mess as they liked without ever ever being shouted at.
It had been exciting for the first two days, fun for the following three. But by now the heady freedom had dissolved into an aching boredom with a great emptiness...
In this world there is no pain, no disappointment. No one can hurt her here.
In this world she's in control. People look up to HER. They LOVE her. They admire her beauty and style and uniqueness. In this world she can be as silly as she wants.
She can break all the rules and STILL be looked up to as Role Model.
In this world there is no pain, no disappointment. No one can hurt her here. She is a child as well as an adult. She is a hero. An angel. A warrior.
Anything she dreams off, she...
The snow had hardened overnight and was crisp now. It wasn't what you would call a cold day and Fran had left her jacket unbuttoned. She was looking at the children off in the distance.
"I'd forgotten that it was today."
Alan was looking farther away.
"I wasn't looking forward to it or anything."
He reached in his pocket and found and empty packet of cigarettes.
"Dammit."
"When did they start doing it?"
"I don't know, maybe 3 or 4 years ago."
"Do you remember the first one?"
"No. It's just a thing that happens."
She felt very bad then...
My eyes were tired; I rolled over in my bed, and stared briefly at the moon.
I turned back to face my fan; the 90-degree summer heat only dropped to 78 overnight, enough to make me sleep in shorts and a tank top.
My phone buzzed and lit-up its orangy color. Message from: Alex. I clicked to read the message, and it was some drunken rambling. "Oh boy," I thought, "what now?"
Our messages would go back and forth with when we would meet again, to what each other did that day or night. That was the summer I owed...
"Travel light."
"But take everything with you."
A murmur of confusion ran across the gathered crowd.
"That will only slow us down!" The young man who had been such a cool head through all of their troubles spoke firmly, with an authority far greater than his age would normally have allowed.
"We can't allow them to find anything which they could use against us." The town drunk retaliated. Or at least, that was all he had been, until the shadow began to cross the land and the war drums had begun to beat once more, since then, he had been...
The noises that, at first, filled every pocket of air, immediately and harmoniously silenced. The overcast sky of smog and gas cracked open like chick which has been waiting weeks to hatch, the yellow feathers shined through. And all was quiet. The men did not speak, they dropped their arms, but their guns' falls were muted by this minute of peace. Even the men dared not to speak. Enemies were no longer so, there was no definition between men, just as there are no barriers between the birds which were the first to make a sound. A song which awoke...