A girl with caramel eyes. That's all I know about her. She's a girl with caramel eyes. I wonder, vaguely, what shade of caramel: I murdered someone in a sweets factory once. There were so many different shades of caramel. Brown, dripping, honey sticky and sweet. Caramel is a wide field. I hope there is time to paly with her before she dies. That's the best part, playing with them. I want to watch her eyes widen as she watches me trace a knife around her throat. Maybe, if she's not a fat lump, I'll even kiss her. Not soft,...
Fault. It is so common a word. Used by so many to allay the suspicion that they are truly the ones responsible. And who am I? I am no different.
My leg moved as if in a dream, gliding through time and space like it was made of water, no jelly, no gravity. It moved, ever so slowly towards a destination that I couldn't help but be brought to. Call it fate, call it fault call it whatever you will but in the end that is where I ended up. One foot in the street and another on the sidewalk....
The Bronx Zoo in my mind was empty. Maybe the gazelles were milling around Yankee Stadium, waiting for Catfish Hunter. The green grass of memory, my synapses folding in the sweeping July breeze, beheld the sweet roots of my birthday candles, climbing the kitchen air like lithesome monkeys, nimble as the imagination.
"Saranghae."
His words made my heart stop.
"What did you say?" I whispered, not daring to look back at him.
" I love you Hye Jin. I said I love you. So please..Come back. Be mine." Sae Joon reached for my hand, but I quickly slapped it away.
"No! I..I'm not good enough for you. I have to leave. I have to get out of here." I stepped towards the plane entrance and held back my tears.
"You can't please!" Sae Joon fell to his knees and hugged my leg.
"Joon..Please don't make this harder than it needs to be....
The rain came pouring down upon me. And as I lay there, my cheap gown leeching its red dye into the gutter, I imagined my own blood joining it and just letting myself go away. I thought about it for a long, long time. The rain intensified. The thunder seemed to be synched to my thoughts and my sudden spasms of regret and anguish and misery.
It came down to making a choice. I would either stand up and walk on, or I wouldn't. I thought about how long it would take for me to perish in this place, knowing...
"So are you going to Joanie's?"
...
"Why not? It's not like she is a bitch or anything."
...
"She didn't... She didn't! Oh that was low."
...
...
...
"All that?"
...
"Now you are pulling my leg, I knew Joanie like football, but what a way to show it. But you know we should go."
...
"Why? I can't believe you just asked that. Why? Because her parents left her to watch their home, you know that seventeen bedroom house on the hill. She wants a few people over."
...
"I don't know, fifty or seventy."
...
"Oh...
Dave turned the dial up to 11. Maximum. There were only a few seconds left until the next jump, he needed to be prepared. He rembered back to basic training, all you needed was to get your stance right, place your hands either side and...
The clackson pearced the air. This was it. The heavy metallic doors slowly collapsed revealing the dark bluish purplish redish swirling void that streamed past the opening.
Dave lept.
The air raid sirens were going off. I could tell. Even from the thousands of feet above, I could hear the wailing of the sirens call. And that was fine. Most of the people below us would be dead by morning anyway. The tell tale rumble of the US sky-boats shook the fuselage of the Junker we were in, signalling our commanding officer to greenlight our jump. In the dwindling light of evening we leaped from our Ju-88, nicknamed Hati, and plummeted towards the blooming flowers below.
Allied parachutes blew up below us as we rocketed towards the earth. I...
It never worked on Sundays. Not sure why. It was plugged in and the Hydro folks never disconnected us on Sundays. We could use the can opener Sundays. The microwave too. But the TV. Well, it would just sit there in the corner, gathering dust. We'd twist the knob but dang it all, screen stayed dark.
"Gol!" says Paw, who's about the biggest football fan in these parts. "I bought that TV just to watch my games and now it won't work."
"You can go down to Duncan's Bar," I suggested. "He's got all the games on the big TV."...
They weren't Norwegian, they were Swedish. We bombed all hell out of them anyway.
That was ash, not smoke. Ash moves slower than smoke. Ash langours. Yes, that might have been soot, but it could have been bone.
In the mess at breakfast, we could heard a chirping through the settling din.
That wasn't a bird.