I clutched onto the flowers. Today was the day. I am only 19 but I am getting married right now. My father was a rich businessman and my mother died when I was very young. My father than re-married and she married a beautiful Parisian woman. You may think she is a beauty but she is a pain in the arse. She treats me like rubbish. "Go fetch me my earrings," she would call out. But one year later after marrying my father she died suddenly.
My father couldn't bear this again, so he sent me to an orphanage. I...
Of course, Heather was twisted. Everybody knew this except Gene, so of course he was the only one who ever professed his love to her. Except Heather wanted to leave him for just this reason; who would act unabashedly and intentionally weird if she did not want to be loved for it? Heather, certainly, wanted to be loved for who she was.
The two of them were watching TV. Good-natured, his loopy grin a chipper wave at the world, Gene turned to Heather and said, "Darling, I will make you a sandwich! Stay put, don't move a finger." She looked...
Once in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She was hoping to catch a cool breeze as well as a paying customer as the slinky dress billowed behind her. Cigarettes were sexy again, and with lung disease the least of her worries, she inhaled with abandon. Another night, another John...
But tonight was different, because as she bent to tap the ashes from her cigarette, she saw a green cloth protruding from behind the fake potted plant near the doorway. Curiousity getting the better of her, she pulled aside the leaves to find the...
Karrie had never worn white in her life. Not the day of her first communion, not even when she'd dressed as a ghost that one Halloween, but yet here she was...
What the hell had she been thinking getting involved with Ken? Really, Ken- like the doll. He wasn't her type at all. He loved tradition and tuxedos and classic rock, while she adored zombies and punk. And him, of course. What had she been thinking?
From the moment she met him, everything about him irritated her. His pigheadedness, his obnoxious sense of humor, his conservative dress. He could be...
"Well shit, that didn't work," the conductor said.
He walked around the wreckage, pulling out passengers. Women, mostly. The men waved off his advances.
One gloriously attired woman emerged from a smoldering welt of torn metal as though she were departing at Poughkeepsie. Nary a scratch or displaced hat-feather.
"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on," the conductor thought. What he said was, "Ma'am."
The day was still high above them, children kicking rocks along the tracks. The conductor scratched under his hat and wondered, well what the hell now?
A man sitting in the...
In 1921, he flew from the Great Rift Valley, along the trails left by the ancient Martians, to find the Temple of the Sun. It was buried, like so much else on Mars, in red sands over the course of millennia, but that meant nothing when you had a native to escort you to their ancestral home.
"So, how can we breathe here?" Pete asked the small, silver creature before him.
It sat in the biplane, strapped in, looking ridiculously small in the pilot's seat. "Air bubble," it replied, fiddling with the dials.
Pete had never flown in a biplane...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
Mrs. Baer had not picked her for the reading group, but that didn't matter, because it didn't mean she wasn't good enough, it just meant that Mrs. Baer didn't KNOW how well she could read! Mom would say it, loud and clear Emily could hear it in her head, "If you'd just made yourself noticed, Emily, then you would not have been ignored!" This is what Mom always told both of her older sisters when they became too meek.
"You get...
When we reached the top, we were so dizzy from the thin air we'd forgotten why we had to climb and headed back down the mountain.
At the bottom, clear-headed, we remembered why we had to climb and headed back up the mountain.
This continued for the rest of our lives.
"Hello."
"What?"
"Hi."
"Who are you? No, wait. Where are you?"
"Look up."
"You're in the sky?"
"We are."
"You're..."
"Butterflies. Yes. Does this bother you?"
"To be honest, less than it should."
"We have been watching you. We saw that you were different. We chose you."
"Chose me for what?"
"The time is coming and we are here to warn you. To warn all of you."
"Warn us? What are you, some sort of prophet."
"We are of God, if that is what you mean."
"Ah."
"We bring you a message from the depths of chaos, the heart of...
The daring were punished. They were punished with exactly what they wanted, and found out the paucity of their imagination and desires.
It was near midsummer when the djinn arrived in Baghdad. He promised to each person, exactly what they wanted, the one thing. There were no rules, no catches. This was no monkey paw to wish upon, but a djinn in all his smoking glory, blue fire leaping from his eyes and his ears, red lightning visible from his mouth when he spoke, and a long rumbling thunder when he laughed at those that came to make their wishes....