Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
"Ladies? Gentlemen? Entities?" Helen paused. No response.
Helen glanced around. The large workroom -- some schizophrenic combination of retro and avant0-garde -- was loud, clicking and warbling and chatting in a very large number of tongues.
Helen cleared her throat. It should have been for effect, but it was because her throat had suddenly dried, as if she had swallowed the entirety of the Sahara back on Terra. "People! And non-people! Listen!"
To their credit, many did. Many didn't, but that...
I had a dream the other night. We were sitting alone in our rooms, all of us, every single one, when suddenly —
The walls just fell away. There was no sound, no pyrotechnics; with a quiet resignation, all the matter in the world, except for our warm, breathing bodies, fell down into the void, leaving us floating purposelessly, naked.
And we all looked at each other, as the psychic frameworks that we etched into the streets, into our homes – our routines, our beaten paths, all the conventions that existed not in the world, but in the world as...
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...
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...
We are made of fluff and light.
We are made for a continuing struggle to come together in our floating.
When I fell in the garden and you laughed I knew it was not from cruelty, I knew because we are the same you and I. Unable to keep out the beauty that is the terrible world.
We whisper the standing wave form that is the one true light.
We will collapse back upon ourselves and drift into the unrecognizable dawn.
But today
My love
We will kiss with muddy knees and full laughing hearts, and God will smile.
It approached. Winter came quickly... I thought of ending it then, but I couldn't. I couldn't say goodbye right before Christmas, and then I needed a date for New Years Eve, and then I didn't want to spend Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, or even Memorial Day lonely. Then I guess he grew on me. I guess. Then came July 4th, September, Halloween, and then Thanksgiving. Then Christmas again. On Christmas he asked me to marry him and I felt that I owed it to him. It was our 3rd winter, 3rd Christmas, and I couldn't say goodbye again. Who...
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...
She'd have preferred the electric chair, at least that one bloody moved. She could get up a good speed on that one, maybe she could get out of it, escape their sympathetic looks. It was bad enough losing the power in your legs without their condescending looks. Idiots.
Apparently it was a "power chair", but, frankly, bollocks to that. Jokingt that she was living out a death sentence was one of her few pleasures left - that terror in their eyes, the "oh god how do we respond to that" was what she was living for right now.
Actually, that...
dear bobo,
happy birthday! i am sorry i missed it, but i hummed the song for you this morning while we convoyed into the city. i think you're eight now, but it's hard to keep track 'cuz you just seem so big and grown-up each time i see you.
mom tells me you got bit on the neck by a spider the other day and that you haven't been feeling so great. she says maybe you're not having a birthday party this year 'cuz some weird stuff happened when you first tried to go back to school after getting sick....
You can count me out. You really think I'm going to use that thing? that dangerous, weapon-like thing? You really think I'm going to lug around four pounds of dead animal flesh? Think again. Don't even get me started on the sphere of death as I like to call it. Have you noticed how it comes toward its victim, hurling itself through space at a hundred and seventy-five miles per hour, no conscious, just aim and fire. It's not for me. I'm not saying I'm a wimp, I'm not saying you're crazy. I'm saying I have no wish to die....