(To read Part 3, follow this link: http://sixminutestory.com/stories/somewhere-better-part-3.)
"Choose as you please," said Someone Good. "Surrender to the breeze, or fight for control. Which do you value: predictability, or potential. The known and the now, or the unknown, the good?"
As the air whipped in gusts around her, gripping her, twisting her, she struggled. Within herself, she wrestled for a choice. Would she allow herself to be carried up by these winds of change?
Somehow she knew that this was a defining moment. It was here, in the borderlands of Somewhere Better, that she could either fight her way back...
The day had dragged on. Lari looked around the street as she left work. She felt as if she had just ran a marathon with cement shoes on. You wouldn't think that being a marketing assistant would make someone so tired.
The street was full of the regular faces. People that she saw everyday, but never really looked at. Lari sighed as she waited for her bus. I need a vacation, she thought.
A young girl walked by, licking a dripping ice cream cone and holding a large red balloon. The girl didn't care that she had dripped chocolate down...
“We are such stuff as dreams are made of.” Smith quipped. “The Tempest. Act four…”
“…Scene one. And it’s ‘on’ not ‘of’.” I retorted. “It continues. And our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
Smith snorted. “Ever the pessimist. And yet.” He paused for effect. “I propose to travel forward in Time by one second.”
“Smith, you can’t. Except by the traditional route. Which just takes one second to do. Except we are moving in Space-Time. Not just Time. Only light can do that without feeling the time pass.”
Smith shrugged. I tried to explain. “The Earth spins 460m/s....
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. It wasn't a normal doorway because when I say doorway you think of things like wood and brass nobs and, possibly, hinges.
This had none of those.
And it was hardly a red gown, because you are likely thinking of something you'd take to a ball, or if you're the really twisted sort, and I can tell you are, there's an image of a piece of clothing given out to a somewhat disturbing institution, or asylum, for those less inclined to modern verbiage or intent on...
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,...
The fields were parched. There was no water. Where was the rain, she wondered as she stared across the cracked land. There were clouds rolling in from the east but they brought no hope of rain. The stream that used to run through here had been clear and sweet, she remembered. Sighing, she turned from the depressing sight and got back to preparing the evening meal. Jim and the boys would be home soon and they would be hungry after a long day in the fields.
"I can help you." A small voice said.
She jumped and looked around in...
The teacher looked at her students and said, "You will not make it."
"You will not be the next R&B star, a famous football or basketball player. You will not become the next Snookie or The Situation. You will not be discovered as a famous model/artist/musician/actress/fill in the blank after a year of struggle in New York City, where you went to 'find yourself.' You will not write the next great American novel. You will not become a billionaire."
The students threw bullets with their eyes that screamed a silent defiance. How dare you?
"You are going to need to...
Time stopped the moment I recognized the driver. I clenched my fists and stepped back onto the curb but the car screeched to a stop and I knew he'd recognized me.
I could have run back into a building, found an exit into an alley. Instead I bolted into the middle of the street and froze on the crosswalk. My eyes met the driver's and I heard as if from a distance the honking horns and screams of cars and people.
My throbbing pulse sent cold pumps of blood through my body and my skin prickled, and my clothes dampened...
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...
The curtains were the safety.
I could never sleep unless the curtains were draped and folded over each other, obscuring the window completely. I could not even take a shower in the evenings, because once the dusk and dark hit I would become convinced that the moment I closed my eyes as I washed my hair, that something.... THE SOMETHING would be staring in at me when I open them.
I believed the curtains hid that same darkness. The moment I pulled the curtains apart I would see The Something.
He laughed at me for that.
I'd buried that fear,...