"What the hell happened here?" The man in the blue button up military coat came up to the wreck. He wore a hat on his head, and had a handlebar mustache.
"Well sir... It-" A young black man began to explain the incident.
"Shut up, I didn't ask you nigger." The man immediately silenced the young black man, who rested a large pick-axe on his shoulders. The black man recoiled slightly. "You there, tell me what happened here." The military man pointed to a young white boy who was looking at the wreck.
"The train just... Crashed Mister. It was...
"Avery," she said, eyes flashing, "Avery, Avery."
I held the snake in my hands. "I need to take care of it. It's lonely."
"Animals belong in the outdoors, not in kindergarten."
"Then I belong in the outdoors, too!"
"Avery, if you continue this for one moment longer –"
"Don't worry," I whispered, almost to myself. "Flora will get you. Flora will get you."
She came a few minutes later, rage flickering on and off in her pale face. "What's all this?"
Miss Duncan glared. "Your sister brought a snake into a kindergarten classroom."
"What the bloody –"
"Flora!" I yelped....
It was picture day. Mom took us all to the park. The whole family, I mean. It was her, dad, both sets of grandparents, all 8 great-grandparents, my sister, my brother, his kid, and all our aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and third cousins and their dogs and cats and kindergarten teachers. There were 63,293 of us in all. And mom had us all wear the same thing: blue jeans and red shirts.
We all gathered under the shade of the mighty elm and then the photographer took the picture. She had to take 37 shots to...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She gazed upwards towards the empty whiteness where the sky used to be. Outside, the streets were filled with people doing the same. Cars had screeched to a halt. Things were dropped, and dog leashes let go of.
The sun, the moon, the stars, the clouds - nothing was there. Only, they weren't looking just at the nothingness. All eyes had narrowed to the one dead pixel. Hanging in the sky, like a tiny afterglow of a tiny what-used-to-be.
Holly scrutinized the first sentence of her novel. It was odd how not reading it for months had given her a wildly new perspective. When she was writing it, she'd been too close to the material, she hadn't been objective, hadn't made herself consider the fact that she was wrong in anything that she did. There were mental grooves worn deep in her mind that only now were swept away like footprints in the snow.
It ... sucked.
The ecstasy of seeing her work in print was instantly deflated by how awful she judged it to be. A single sentence...
The people in the cafe continued talking as I stood to look at the door. Still not here. I glanced at my watch. Dash it all, I was going to be late to my meeting. He would not be getting dinner tonight, oh no. My husband wasn't one for standing me up, though...whatever. He's not here, and I have to go. I walked out of the cafe, jogging down the stairs and out. What I saw I will never forget. My husband's car and another one in flames down the street, an obvious car crash. My heart stopped then started...
Light.
It had been a while since I've seen it. Not the kind of light that you switch on or off when you walk into a room, but the light that switches on when you hit the bottom. The light that you were missing while you were walking blindly around that led you to fall.
I know many times before I could have just switch it on, but I'm stubborn. I couldn't let go of my pride and admit I could not see and that I was wrong.
Arrogant.
But the Lord is patient. He knows me very well, heck,...
"I hate her." He spit his words, I knew the taste of her still rested on his tongue, and he gave everything he had to saying those three words with such a vile tone. "Listen, I think maybe this time you guys should-" "No." The way he looked at me, at first with anger, and now with the confused sadness I had once felt a few months back, I felt heartbroken for him. "Maybe it didn't work out because.. maybe it didn't work out because I was still in love with someone else." I know it sounds stupid, and corny,...
It was the same old lie it always was.
"The day after tomorrow, this will all be over."
Of course it would. And tomorrow morning, someone would say it again. And the day after that. And the day after that.
Tomorrow may never come, but the day after tomorrow? Not a chance. Not a glimmer of hope.
The days all ran together anyway, here - there was nothing that set any one day apart from another. The air would be thick with tension, the trench would be cold, somebody would get injured, another would die. It was the same every...
"You'll never say it, will you?"
"Say..what?"
"What do you think?" She is exasperated, hands on her hips, eyes looking...sore, maybe.
I can never tell.
I should be able to, by now.
"That? Those words?"
She makes a face, and it's like a bridge collapsing. "Those words. You make it sound like they're...they're... like they're something bad."
I can't even think them, let alone say them. I mean, I do, of course I do, but... No.
"They aren't." I attempt. "And...you already know..."
"Do I?" She's staring now. "I did. I did know, but now...I'm not so certain. I...I just...