She could feel the terror drenching and cloaking itself around her. Don't be afraid, it whispered. You've known for years, it whispered. But still she did not know what do to.
Her name was Emma Fairfax, and she was dying.
It approached, back bent and hooded cloak hiding its face. It was terrifying and calming all at once, a simple presence in a simple place.
She was afraid.
A single bony finger reached out from under the sleeve and cricked forward, beckoning her towards the form. "Come to me," it whispered.
And she did.
I sprawl out across my book-strewn bed. The window is shut tight, the words on the page are swimming, and the beat of the neighborhood "get together" pounds at my scull. "William Shakespeare is by far the world's most widely known and appreciated playwright..." The textbook sits next to me, seeming to take up my entire bedroom. I can't focus on anything with all this stupid music. I reach for the mug of cold coffee sitting on my bedside table and pound it back. I grimace at the cold bitterness as it slides down my tongue. The clock reads 3:17am....
Giving in wasn't an option. She had to get out, to free herself from the seat belt that had saved her life, but that was now pressing her to her seat, trapping her inside the car that was now rapidly filling with water.
The lorry had come out of nowhere. The road had been dark, slippery, and she could have sworn that it had not been there when she had pulled out of the junction opposite the lake, but it had been and it had slammed into her like a giant sledgehammer. The car had spun round and round, her...
Spinning. Spinning. Spinning. That is all she knows now.
"You'll become dizzy soon," he whispers in her ear. She smiles deliriously as he turns her around, spins her again. His hands, big and strong, fit around her waist perfectly.
"Spin," she tells him. "Spin." Again he twirls her. She is tiny in front of him. She smiles again.
The world has become a colorful blur around her. In this spinning she can forget everything. Maybe her past blurs behind her now, and all the lies blur into something deeper, into truth. Maybe this way everything can blur and blur till...
The gate closed behind them. Ahead of them stood the fearsome Morley house, said to be haunted with the ghosts of the former occupants, who had been killed years ago.
Jana, the youngest of the four, turned pale. "Are you sure it's safe to be here?"
The second-oldest, Robert, scoffed, "There's no such thing as ghosts."
"I'm more worried about Dad finding out we're not in bed," Jason, the second-youngest, said.
"You guys are such wusses. C'mon!" Angela, the oldest, ran up the hill to the house, opening the door. As soon as she stepped in, though, she ran out...
"Write," she instructed.
So he did. He wrote. He wrote of many things, and when he was done, he presented the neatly bound typewritten pages to her. She didn't even look at them.
"Write more."
He wrote more. He wrote of how he felt when the sun in the afternoon cast dappled lines across the floor. He wrote about prison bars and he wrote about prison food. He wrote about her, and how her dark hair was short and clipped above her ears. He wrote about how her brown eyes pierced his soul and tore him apart and all he...
He had always loved the smell of lavender.
It grew in his garden in flourishes; soft green stalks blooming and sprouting purple flowers, primed to be picked for the flower sale that next spring.
He loved flowers, and he hated them. The flowers were what had taken her away from him; entrancing her into his garden as she cooed softly to them, the buds responding by peaking through a coat of leaves. The garden loved her, when she stepped into the backyard the grass would thicken and the bees would settle into her long hair. He had always told her...
Wide eyes, open and deep
Divine perfection in bodily form
An angel drawn from sleep
She draws me to the sweetest storm
Maggie knew it was only a matter of time before she was caught. It was inevitable, as certain as the rising of the sun each morning over India's beautiful river.
She wasn't cut out for this sort of thing. She KNEW that. But when she saw it there, dark and rich and beautiful she knew she just had to have it, come what may. So now she sat in her seat, shivering, sweat beading on her forehead as the plane taxied for a landing. The bag shifted inside her blouse, it's contents conforming to the shape of her body as...
Inner core
Outer core
Mantle
Upper mantle
Crust
Susan.
Flora between her fingers,
Seeds between her toes.
Like Cinderella, I thought,
recalling an old "Wizard of Id" panel.
I stroll above the layers of the earth,
sing-songing under the tarp of heaven,
bulging with the weight of infinity.
Susan springs to her feet.
"Jesus Christ, a spider! Kill it!"
tangling her hair with
typewriter fingers.
I catch it on a leaf and
move it across the field.
I guess that makes me Mantle.