The Skeleton Key was lying on the dresser, as it had for as long as he could remember. It meant more to him now than it ever had-now that he realized what was in the locked chest. She never even considered that he might wonder what was in the chest.
Now, as he arrived home from the hospital, having suffered a minor heart attack, the skeleton key lying on the dresser piqued his desire to finally open the chest. His own chest had been locked up for so long, enclosing his own heart--not fully experiencing what a heart has the...
Smile for the camera
He was of an age when he knew he didn't want snatches of reality - no, no, reality was already all around him, he'd had more than enough reality.
He wanted a false joy, the kind of happiness only captured in an instamatic, the image that would was all at once meaningless and meaningful.
In later life he'd write for hours on end about the false smiles that don't reach the eyes, about what those expressions really mean, what's really going on beneath the surface, the realities that can be extracted from the falsehoods.
But -...
The day it burned down my mother locked herself in her room and wouldn't take any visitors.
"Mom, come out of there!" my little sister whined and cried for her.
"No!" "It's not fair, it's not right!" "This didn't happen, it couldn't have!"
Her memories of him, that Winter in 1973 where they sat on the front steps of the chapel and watched bikes and cars drive by... The day they got married; January 19, 1973. When they blew off the after-wedding limo to watch the snow fall, later to hitchhike to their own reception.
It was just like her,...
The train accident was something I'd never seen before. People scattered amiss the wreckage, with nothing to do but survey the damage they'd just been witness too.
I saw the train crew carry away a few body, the names of which I only know of Carol and Robert. I did not know them, but I imagine they were married. A young couple going West to celebrate their new uniformed love. Carol could have been pregnant, ready to start a family. And it all ended for them in just a few second.
The word going around is that this was caused...
It's ringing. Ringing. Ringing. Ringing. STOP it from ringing!
Karla never wanted to hear his voice again. Never wanted to hear that damn ring of the public phone at on the corner of East and Cherry. Never wanted to wait again; to see if he'd call, usually he wanted money. Always for drugs. Drug money. Meth money. That idiot, he was killing himself, and now he wanted their son. Brian wouldn't even look at Gray when he came to the lobby of their high rise, his dad was always high, red-eyed, and stumbling. They used the pay phone in case...
Sometimes I am shocked at the state of America today. The young people just have not respect - no decency at all. They go around and do whatever they wish - guided, though, not by their wishes but by the pulsing masses. Every time that I see it I am disgusted. I see it and shrink. I don't understand it entirely. But this one thing is like my only weakness. Maybe I am like them. I just following a whim of someone else - or something. I'd like to think that I could have a justification for something that hits...
She flipped the switch as she came through the door, but nothing happened.
"Damn" she sighed and set down the grocery bags. Walking carefully through the room she tried the lamp by the couch, still nothing. "ugh" She was really getting a little scared now. She continued into the kitchen, trying all the switches there was, but no light came on. She was headed for the back door and the flash light that was kept there when suddenly all the lights in the house went on.
"Surprise!" She screamed and laughed and cried at the same time.
"oh, God, you...
"Where am I?" asked Jolene, as she took some hesitant steps toward the elevator. "Am I on the moon?"
"You are not on the moon," was the response. The voice seemed to come from all around her. "You are on a spacecraft. The Earth as you know it is uninhabitable."
"What? Why? What happened?"
"You will find out later," it said. "Take the elevator to the highest floor."
Jolene entered the small enclosure and pressed the button marked '35'. There was no 36.
"God will ask you a series of questions," the voice continued. "If the answers are incorrect, he...
Let me tell you a story or a hero named Sam. He was quite a character, as he worked as an Ambulance driver. His goal had been to be a doctor, but his villain of a college professor had failed him, and squashed that dream. He had hitched a ride from a paramedic one day, and he had gotten a job as the man's assistant. Since he had the credentials, Sam was already qualified to become a paramedic. He enjoyed the job, knowing that he could be vital to saving another person's life, and that was alright for him. But...
I held it at arm's length, thinking that it could never get to me that way.
But as I sit here alone in this room night after rain soaked day. I have come to realize,with the full clarity of a reformed sinner; it was not that I was protecting me from it. It was that I was protecting it from me.
And it never wanted protection in the first place.