When I was twelve I went to sea, aboard a small ship. They hired me to clean and sweep and feed the men, in exchange they said they would take me across the ocean to the new world.
A week or two after shipping out, a storm rose on the horizon. The wind she blew and rain she fell and waves crashed into the sides.
The captain went first, and then his crew, leaving just me and another, a drunk.
The sails were torn, and the bow was pierced, the hull became full of water. Neither of us knew how...
You can hide me here, in my pretty things. I will not stir to fight the malaise.
However did you want me, strong? To have your cake and eat it, too?
I was just dreaming of the outside world, of a dream outside this dream. Of colors that are vivid and real. Of people you can reach out and touch. Of rain that falls onto your skin. Of dirt that makes you truly dirty.
And you, you were just telling me stories. Stories of the people you saved during your travels. How you shared a space with a teenage mother...
It confused them, the gnarled branch lying across rows of newly planted wheat. The tree had been healthy and the weather clear. A bob of bushy fur worked its way along the length of the fallen wood as a squirrel investigated the carnage.
Years from now, when the children had scaled the sheer rock face near their home, they'd think back to this day.
"And now where shall we climb?" the boy asked.
"There," the girl replied, a mountain peak under her finge
Safura M Bhapavit had believed that the secret of eternal life had lain in discovering a relationship between religion and science. He had scoured his native India, from tropical south to mountainous north, in search of evidence that would lead him to the human being who most closely represented God, or Buddha, or however one choose to express it. The longing for this eternal life, Safura argued, must have its roots in the tangible and the real, despite centuries of confusion and myth.
He found Jane as he getting out of a taxi at Heathrow Airport, ready for the next...
It was so completely and utterly disgusting. the boys were throwing the book round the room while she fumed and screamed at them. the other girls teamed up to stop them. after they were kicked out of the classroom and punished, they just joked around and acted like it was all fun and games. after that incident, that was where i stepped in. i went to the library and wrote down every book in the database that concerned dealing with bullying and peer pressure, then brought it to the teacher as a list of references she could look to. but...
It was so completely and utterly disgusting. the boys were throwing the book round the room while she fumed and screamed at them. the other girls teamed up to stop them. after they were kicked out of the classroom and punished, they just joked around and acted like it was all fun and games. after that incident, that was where i stepped in. i went to the library and wrote down every book in the database that concerned dealing with bullying and peer pressure, then brought it to the teacher as a list of references she could look to. but...
"Wait, so he hit you?" "Yes, he did! I couldn't believe it! I was just waiting in line for a pink slime burger and then..bam!" Lucky for me, it bouinced off my ripplig shoulder museles and I felt nothing. But still, I mean, he hit me! First off, I ddn;t even know this guy. I think it all started when I walked into the restauraut. I walked past his table and I heard him say, "Yeah, you're right. Justin Beiber is HORRIBLE!" I stopepd in my tracks. I pulled up a chair and sat right next to this monster. I...
The dystopia is a genre of fiction designed to teach a lesson about society by imaging a future society warped in some terrible way. The interesting thing about dystopian novels is their reliance on a single, antagonistic character to provide a terrible monologue of exposition to the horrified protagonist, explaining just how and why society went bad, and why the system must persist.
George Orwell's 1984 has O'brien, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has Mustafa Mond, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 has Captain Beatty, the remarkably well-read "fireman" who has turned his back on all that literature had to offer...
Stepping slowly off the train, my eyes adjusted to the black blanket that cast itself over the old town in nowhere France, about three miles from the border of Belgium. Having no clue where I was, I tried to recount the previous events by fitting each individual awkward happening side by side, hoping their grooved edges matched so as the picture might unfold as a panorama landscape in my mind. Then, and only then, I might be able to tell myself why I had woken up in the black night, on a train in a foreign country that speaks a...
It faded.
The pictures always did, but somehow they'd hoped this one would be different. It was more special than the others, it meant so much more - but no. It faded, just like the others.
It became an odd family ritual, to kiss the cheek that had faded before leaving the house, like you'd kiss a mother - it didn't matter that it was a picture of a film star, one they'd never meet.
He was winking. Maybe that was what made him good luck.
Mia had collected pictures, that had been the point of it - pictures cut...