It was like the time he thought that Daddy was hurting Mummy, he was sure. He was certain there'd be a Reasonable Explanation, like when Mummy shouted at God in the middle of the night, and asked Him for 'more'.
He was trying to work it out, to see what the Reasonable Explanation could be. Sometimes there isn't one. One morning when Granddad Alan was alive and he was staying at the house, he'd found his granddad eating Smokey's SuperRabbit food for breakfast with Mummy's red label milk.
He'd tried to see the Reasonable Explanation but there hadn't been one,...
There was a stage. A microphone. A guy with a guitar and another at a piano. One spotlight trying to mark out everything up there and missing the edges. And that was it. If the audience in the jazz bar had been expecting anything more, anything grander or, well, jazzier, they were disappointed. Most were. It was a good place to be disappointed in.
It was a good place to spend money when it had nowhere else to be spent too. That’s mostly what these people were doing. Spending money that they didn’t know what else to do with. Spending...
"Straighten your spine," whispered Jenny as she placed her hand on my back.
I loved this move, but could never do it right, even though I'd be practicing yoga on and off for about three years now. Something about it asked me to be too flexible, to vulnerable.
But I worked on flattening my back, all the same, and pulling my left shoulder back to deepen the stretch.
"Now, switch to the other side," said Jenny, in her steady voice, standing back at the front of the class.
I reached to the right this time and could hear the cracks...
"Helluva storm, Joe," I say.
"Ayup," he says shakily, gazing out into the fog. His uniform is wet through and he's a-startin' to tremble. It won't be long before he can't hold on to the beam no more.
"Shore wish you ain't cut the riggin' there, Bob," says Dave. He's on the end, Dave is, hangin' tight to the canvas. A good gust o' wind gonna sweep him away.
"Oh yeah, everythin' be my fault," I complain. How was I to know? You tell me that. How was I to know the riggin' be the on'y way down?
"Too bad...
Matilda was the first woman he'd ever dated that had been a cat before surgery. She told him at the end of the third outing, to the Italian restaurant, a night of sexual tension, sweaty waiters, mixed up menus and his clumsiness knocking over the carafe of white wine over her lap. She smiled, pink lipstick still intact after a meal of coiled pasta and mince. No leaping up off the chair in horror, running to the bathroom, telling him to F O and never call again.
Matilda held his arm as they left the restaurant and stood looking over...
"What's that you say?" the captain growled into his phone, "Pirates, in our neighborhood?"
He called out to his men, "Raise the flag! Ready your weapons! If they want to be pirates, they can prepare for battle."
The men went about their business, but the usual bounce to their steps were gone. Their captain had spent a wee bit too much time watching Peter Pan as a lad, and they were paying for it
.
"What weapons would you have us use, cap?" asked one soldier.
"We have no cannons and no plank, are you crazy?" muttered another soldier.
The...
I awoke, bleary eyed to an explosion of noise outside my room. I lay there still, playing the situation through my mind, wondering what on earth could be happening. It was cold, my face especially so. Suddenly I felt a wetness there and lifted my head so that I could look down at where my head had been resting. There was blood on my pillow. The smell of it hit me with some force and I almost fainted. I touched my cheek where it had rested and felt the blood there on my face. Was it mine?
The noises outside...
Quantum leaping isn't always fun. Not when I end up as a woman. Find it unnerving especially as all I was hoping to do was to channel the skills from one of my parallel selves.
I needed to cook a three course romantic dinner and knew that there must be a Galloping Gourmet self somewhere out there, expert on wines, the best cut of meat and good at table decoration.
Jasmine, was not at all what I wanted, especially as she was a concubine to an extremely ugly Prince, even though she did know how to cook. She was his...
Halloween. He was dressed up and four years old. He was four years old and his father let go of his hand to talk to a pretty woman dressed as a dove with big boobs.
The big rice-farming hat, an umbrella over the sword bearing four year old, bobbed down the street. The street met a pair of tracks and the small samurai, feeling adventurous, ran to see what was making them rumble.
The lights began flashing and a horn honked and the boys father took his eyes out of a dove's swelling cleavage just in time to watch his...