I hated the wallpaper on my phone. For some reason it just appeared overnight even though no trace was found in the files or folders. Nothing I tried would delete the darn thing. Where had it come from and why?
Josie, an amateur feng shui expert made several suggestions but I didn't believe that kind of rubbish. Strangely enough my phone went wrong, you know where all you get is that SOS Emergency screen but you can't access your numbers or do anything else with it. Yet every couple of seconds, the fish appeared again. It was doing my head...
In memory of Sanvee Ali, age 5.
He will be remembered in our home and in our hearts.
We were sitting in the basement, Danny and me. Tv's on. Hockey game. Upstairs ma and pa is fighting again. Bills. Or pa's philanderin'. Didn't know. Didn't care.
"Hey," Danny says. "Let's make a mix tape."
I roll my eyes a little but I don't say no. The two-deck tape player is in the basement as is my whole cassette collection. I know Danny doesn't like most of my music but he does like some songs (The Beatles' Birthday, The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again, The Pointer Sisters' Neutron Dance.)
So we start making a mix tape. Danny, who is...
It was the fifth night in cell 16, my reflection staring back at me. The lights had gone out on the evening of the second day, leaving me and the rest of the people here shrouded in darkness after 4pm. No one has come to check on us since then, and the food they left me ran out yesterday morning. There were sirens outside, but they stopped yesterday too. I don't know what's going on, or if I'll even find a way out of here, but I hope the family is okay. Jesse always was the dumb one, getting into...
I always felt like I was stuck in a bubble. Like the Pope in his vehicle. On display like the Queen of England. A goldfish in a bowl. Maybe it was my shyness or my wart on my left cheek. Maybe it was the lisp that made everyone return my greetings with a "What did you say?" Maybe it was my slumped back, the hump that made shopping for blazers so difficult.
"Who's in there?" small children would say, peering at me on a Sunday in the park. "Don't bother that nice man," their mothers would say. The mothers were...
Homeless, the art installation won first prize. John Wentworth had planned to ruin the artist Kitty More. She used his idea. The one he told her about during their snakebite drinking days. The ones when they both woke up with hangovers worthy of bad poetry, the agony of headaches.
John posted intimate, embarassing photos of her. Lovers amateur sex tapes. Recorded snores and farts. Millions of hits. She retreated from the public eye, she always had low self esteem.
But he never thought she was the suicidal type.
At least the cold would keep the goods from spoiling.
That was Fred's first thought as he lugged the heavy packages from the back of truck, balancing them awkwardly as he struggled through snow. Luckily, the hospital was only a couple blocks away. Delivering the cargo on time without any fluids leaking or parts spoiling shouldn't be a problem. The last thing a transplant patient needs is complications.
Thank goodness for the cold.
The only sound that broke the stillness was the sound of the horses' hooves as they struck the ground. Garth took off his hat and waved it in front of his face.
"How can you see like that?" asked Becky, motioning to the endlessly flat landscape before them. Sand reflected the unending glare of the sun.
"I read somewhere that you lose more body heat through your head than anywhere else," said Garth, fanning himself with the straw monstrosity.
"So you're choosing to be cool over being able to see?" Becky shielded her own eyes from the light.
"Buck here...
I couldn't sleep with her next to me. Rigor mortis set in long ago, and her arms tented the blankets, letting far too much cold air underneath for me to ever get comfortable.
Move the body? I couldn't. Decay bound the corpse to the mattress, and removal would ruin the fine bedding.
I loved that mattress.
Until now, she’d never thought of herself as pretty. Beautiful, yes. Stunning, definitely. An angel fallen to earth, she’d occasionally even heard that one. But ‘pretty’? Pretty was little girl sweet and candy floss innocence. It was not her because it was not enough. Pretty just didn’t cut it.
She stared at herself in the mirror. She’d been doing the same thing for an hour now, barely moving, hardly breathing, not wanting a hair to fall out of place. Pretty was an insult. She couldn’t bear to hear it again, so she was going to make sure she didn’t. That...