It happened gradually. Never when he was looking at it, never exactly the moment he turned away.
It grew. The green-ish mold-like whatever grew. So slowly, it was like watching the Tar Drip experiment. Again. It grew floating inside a near-absolute vacuum in a spherical glass container, with nothing to support its growth.
Well, there was sunlight, but no matter how efficient it was, it couldn't possibly synthesize matter from that.
The worst part was that when he released the vacuum, the particles scattered everywhere. All he could then was to reinstate a vacuum in the container and hope some...
She'd have preferred the electric chair. She'd always been a fan of electricity. She recalled the first time her mother had given her a knife and set her down in front of the light socket. "Go on...Stick it in there good now honey" her mother had told her. And the jolt. Wow. Margaret knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life from that very first light socket. Electricity would be her calling. And boy did she answer that call.
As a young girl she would put on shows for the kids on the block by hopping in the...
It was the fall that surprised me most.
Throughout my twenties, love had always been akin to a distant country: worth visiting perhaps, but out of my budget. I watched others travel to its shores with a lazy detachment and a very small amount of curiosity. There were other places to go. Other places to see. Love was not a final destination and those that went there seemed -- for the most part -- to be the eager embarrassing tourist types that I always avoided during my holidays.
Then I met Albert. The first thing I told him was that...
The year was 1986, when Madonna was telling her father not to tell her what to do, and life changed beyond my own imagination. The holiday had been planned for ages, but I had no desire to spend two terminally tedious weeks camping with my younger sisters. I had Mark, with his dark hair and warm lips, and I couldn't bear to leave him for a fortnight. He might fall under a bus, or worse, fall for Jayne Marsden and he stilletto heels.
He gasped for breath and looked around. The room was dark but he could sense there was someone there. Hello he said, barely audible. No response. Hello? this time a bit louder. From the corner of his eye he saw a flicker of light. At thesame time his nostrils filled with the putrid stench of what smelled like rotting fish. The room started to shake, he lost his footing. Tyring to grab on to the nearest thing possible he screamed when he touched what may once have been a hand but now was bone with some slime like substance that...
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take. That's what she kept telling herself as she drove through the beckoning water drops falling down both inside and out. She could hardly see but knew it was the right thing to do. There's no way she could stay, he hated her for what she was, what she had achieved. It wasn't her fault he resented her for wanting to do what was right.
Crash - and it all was over. Her last thought was her baby and how she would make a great mum, visions of...
The mob held torches like flags, upright and proud, ready for battle with the onion factory. Sons, mothers, daughters, friends, marched on toward revenge. They threw their torches onto the large building, sending smoke signals for miles, saying "we're in charge here!"
For weeks, the town smelled like onions. At first, people sniffed their clothes to make sure it didn't come from their home cooked meals "People" here meaning the people who didn't boycott onions altogether. Most people substituted elephant garlic or onion powder, or just went without the taste. One girl started vomitting at the sight of onions altogether....
She opened the fridge and took out a jar of pickles. Rubbing the condensation off her fingers onto her jeans, she prized the lid off and pulled out a spear.
Crunching away, she rifled through the crisper drawer, but didn't find anything appealing. She noticed there was still paint on the back of her hand, but she was too tired to rub it away.
The house was quiet, except for the snoring of her husband, which carried through the house. She was beginning to feel like she heard more from him when he was asleep then when he was awake....
Everyone was on board for the show. They had their fly gear and their hats. I, of course, forgot my sunglasses.
"No problem," mama said, "just squint!"
As we lined up, I squinted at the audience. It never ceased to amaze me that the entire population of a town would stop what it was doing to watch our show every week. But they did. All fifty-four of them, including the dogs.
I was getting antsy. This week, I was the leader! Never before had a child led the show! I wasn't nervous; there's no room for nerves in show-biz. However,...
I am a visitor. That is the only rule that this thing between us has. That I am just visiting in your life. The briefest glance into a world of possibility. The portal to an alternate universe where lightsabers and superheroes exist is opened up for us in the single moment which we let ourselves have.
You have a girlfriend. I have a complication. But in those stolen moments, kisses, touches, dances, laughs, looks, jokes... each precious second taken from reality and given to us is the only victory that I am ever going to need. Because it is in...