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...
"The river's on fire," said my son. The river did seem to be on fire, if you were only looking at the river.
"No, the sky is," I told him. A reflection from above. He shrugged his shoulders.
He didn't ask why the sky was on fire, just bowed his over over the rowboat's side and continued looking for fish. Small, darting, the color of the river bed, the fish beneath the fire, the river beneath the fire.
My eyes toward the sky, waiting for the fire to come down.
'It's the largest ship I've ever seen.'
"It's the only ship you've ever seen."
"This is why I don't watch movies with you."
"Oh, look at her, look at her pandering to the camera - "
"She's an actress, it's her job."
'This is the beginning of such an adventure!'
"This is the beginning of such an awful film. Why are we watching this?"
"Because I like this film, and you're my sister, you're meant to at least try to like things that I like."
"Surely, as your sister, I am meant to pull your hair, steal your clothes, make...
She pulled her red gown high over her head, trying to shield herself from the oncoming terror, but to no avail. The sheer vivid colour of the gown made her stand out from the bustling crowds, no matter how much she tried to huddle into the dank doorway of the closed shop.
"Please let me in," She whispered, scratching desperately on the chipped wooden panelling, "please." Tears started to fall down her cheeks as she heard the heavy footsteps of her pursuers getting closer and closer, the people around her seeming not to notice her distress.
Suddenly the door creaked...
Becky hoped Tom saw what she had written before her teacher did.
Mr. Smith was notoriously tidy about the things in his classroom. Desks were wiped down once a day, not by the school janitorial staff but by him personally. In other classes she knew friends who would write on the desks, leaving messages for the students who sat there after them - a sort of school texting service between students without cell phones, but Tom took only this one class after her. Would he see her message? She could pass it off as a doodle and if he said...
"Wow, that was a fun."
"Yeah, it was."
Water dripped on the floor as they ran through the house and out onto the deck watching the lightning. It scared her at first but then it was like she had never seen anything so beautiful and menacing. Except perhaps her 8th grade Science teacher, Mr. Hanson. He was an odd man, with a thick black unibrow and wrinkles that resembled an old cartographer's first attempt at the East Coast of South America. He had a sinister laugh, not unlike the thunder shaking the ground under her feet.
She remembers thinking he...
As per usual, our conversation lasted two words:
"Hey"
"Hi"
And that was it for the rest of the day.
I can't explain it. It's not like we were friends or acquaintances, or even enemies although some might've described our relationship as such. We certainly had a bit of an obsession with one another, but whether it was in a negative or positive way (one can {and will} argue that obsession is never a positive thing) I can't be sure.
But everyday was the same; walk in, greet each other, and stare from the corners of our eyes.
It wasn't...
I slowly made my way through the rows of seated people desperate to get out of this ceremony. The elder slowly pushed me on, slowly sighing with defeat i trudged through the long narrow line of people anxiously looking around the crowd only to be met with a sea f unfamiliar faces. Upon my arrival to the temple, the elder smudged glowing paint onto my face whilst chanting words foreign to my ears, he stood up and lit the large pit with fire before the crowd made weird hand gestures and chants that grew louder as the seconds went by....
If we never speak again, there will be so many things I've never said. There will be no record of the thoughts that have been chasing each other around in my head. There will be no reason to remember me. You will never know the truth about what could have been - what I wanted us to be. I will never get to make you understand. If we never speak again...
"Wait!"
"I'm with Stupid"
The T-Shirt slogan on the Soul in front of me seemed peculiarly poignant. Stupid he most certainly was, having been 'gathered' with what the lesser demons called the "Camelot curse" - trading their immortal spirits for a lottery win, which regularly brought in hundreds for as little as £10 a life - rarely did they actually define exactly how much they wanted to win. It was all about the rules, really. HIM upstairs… you know… insisted.
The obligatory 'get out' clause, the battle of wits, wasn't required by HIM, but NICK said there wasn't any fun without...