The water was clear as she looked out over the bridge at the river flowing past her. It was as clear as the choice that she knew she had to make. She had to leave. She would not kill her baby. The child didn't deserve to be born to a father who didn't even want it. She could feel the baby kick inside of her as she tightened her coat. He had been really angry when she had told him about the baby - he'd even hit her. She just couldn't go back and risk both of their lives.
She...
"It's simple," he said. "A simple plan for world domination. The Moon is the key. People need the Moon. So if we threaten to destroy the Moon, everyone in the world will have to do what we say."
This guy was ranting and raving. I sighed, and continued to humor him. "How the hell are you going to destroy the Moon? It's massive. Do you have any idea how massive it is?"
He waved his hands dismissively. "We don't even need all that much destructive power, just enough to produce a credible threat."
"Even if you had a credible threat,...
Birds have always terrified me. Sinister black eyes. The ability to fly. The fact that they evolved from dinosaurs and you know they are just waiting, biding their time until they decide to revolt and take over the world.
So, having to feed my aunt's cockatoo while she was away on vacation, was a constant struggle between fear and responsibility.
I would go to her house after school, and pour the seed or feed or whatever he ate through the bars of his cage. I then turned on the radio. The cockatoo apparently liked the classic rock station while he...
The bear was furious. That much we were sure of. This had been its cave, and we'd simply marched in, claws bared, claiming a challenge, ready to fight. It had been nothing against the bear, per say. We'd simply needed a place, to stay, and this was the first shelter from the rain we'd found. It was simple, and it was away.
Away from all the hustle and bustle of the city, the terrible overload and smell and sound and sights; a wonderful palette for the senses to sample, yes, but far too much. We had simply taken it wrong,...
Emotions are tricky things. They are the things that fill us with that warm, semtimental feeling that we get in our chest while our hearts are busy taking picture so as never to forget the beauty of a moment. That emotion we might call love. They are the pounding of blood running pushing its way through our ears, sweat streaming down cheeks, and our breathing heavy and laboured. That emotion could be named fear. They are also heaviness that seeps through our body after a long day of disappointment and getting nothing done. This is discouragement. But emotions, good or...
Ridiculous. This whole argument was absurd but we were going to have it anyway.
"If you heard it, why didn't you pick it up?"
She looked honestly confused but it seemed obvious to me. I scowled at her. "Why is this such a big deal? Yeah, I heard you drop it but I didn't know it was meant for me."
"Did you think it was trash?" Exasperation now threaded her voice and her arched eyebrow told me there was no way I was going to win this one.
"Well, I certainly didn't think it was some super-secret message that I...
My best friend is a guy called Peter and he's incredible at talking to people. He has a vault of information in his head that he's gotten from all of his past conversations with people. When he meets someone new he merely tells them what he knows so far about their hometown and then lets them build upon it, this he'll take to the next person he meets from there and so on. I was with him the other day and we were talking to a guy from south africa, we live in australia, and the guy was used to...
Savouring words was a joy to him. Illiterate for many years; he learnt to read and write late in life. His appreciation grew from prose to poetry to haiku. Others laughed that he swallowed a dictionary. He did not understand the derision. Loving words, enabling communication beyond speech seemed to him a peerless gift.
Then he discovered etymology. Suddenly connections between ancient languages and modern English brought a deepening joy and fruitful satisfaction beyond any other pursuit he followed. When some spoke he understood unusual words and could name the orinating language;
For some reason, Zombies love wedding veils. Maybe it's a snare mechanism, much like how Venus flytraps look beautiful on the outside before they devour their prey. Or maybe it's some attachment to the things that matter in life, that is, in non-Zombie life. In any case, this one had fooled that part of Ricky that had been longing for companionship of any sort. He had been holed away with canned beans, month-old cooked rice, and a shotgun for far too long not to feel the pangs of desire as she approached him from the woods.
Big mistake.
She lurched...
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...