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...
Whenever the mailperson knocks
They deliver to us a new box
I don't know from whom
But I wish for their doom
On all of their houses, a pox
£18000. The figure flashed through his mind as he drove to work. Quite a sum but not above what many were willing to pay. He wondered if he should up his price, expand the business. He smirked as he parked and pulled on his gloves, He checked his watch and took his time getting his tools from the back of the car. Calm, assured, he had every detail planned so on the job he didn't have to think. He wondered who it was today. He checked his notes; female. He briefly considered what she'd done to piss her husband off...
Everyone was on board for the show. They had their fly gear and their hats. I, of course, forgot my sunglasses.
"No problem," mama said, "just squint!"
As we lined up, I squinted at the audience. It never ceased to amaze me that the entire population of a town would stop what it was doing to watch our show every week. But they did. All fifty-four of them, including the dogs.
I was getting antsy. This week, I was the leader! Never before had a child led the show! I wasn't nervous; there's no room for nerves in show-biz. However,...
You can count me out. Everybody knows he's not my favorite person. I'm not debating that.
Take the way he eats: He makes these noises. He SINGS the chewing. It sounds sort of charming right at this moment, but in point of fact it's gross. Nobody wants to hear a turkey dinner set to Ave Maria. Two weeks planning a meal, you want a moment of silence. Some good old-fashioned reverence. What's happened to that -- what is it -- an emotion? These days, it's gone.
As I said, I don't like the man. But I also don't like crows...
The open road was an open mouth. The dust rose in hissing strands. The sun berated us from every angle and the A/C was spewing out its soul. They called this Hell's Highway.
It was barren, filled only with the amber hues of fatigue and discomfort. We drove onward in silence, as if the merest hint of conversation would cause our cargo to spontaneously combust. I didn't have the energy to admire his golden curls, the arch of his nose, the romance of his mouth. His eyes were forward. They were always facing forward.
A carcass in the road caused...
After the snow melts and the grass starts to grow back, she takes her car and drives out to the country. If she keeps going, she'll find a soybean field left empty and filled with wild prarie grass. She parks the car, gets out and stands in the middle of the field.
She can see for miles and miles. The whole world is sky and grass. She can smell manure when the wind blows.
She lies down in the grass to sleep. The earth is warm and soft. She is sinking into it like a seed. Ever since her family...
I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead. And it's absolutely nothing like I expected.
In all of the near-death experience stories I was told they talked about the light. So much so that I thought that I should walk into it, if only to see what was on the other side. Only there was nothing there, not as far as I've seen anyway. There's just the light.
I keep thinking that if I keep walking, maybe something will appear. But I've been walking and...
"It's called a goldfish."
"Goldfish? Not much of a name."
"That's right. Wasn't much of a fish, either. They used to be so plentiful that we kept them as pets. Put them in bowls."
"Used to be?"
"That's right."
"So you kept fish, but you didn't eat them?"
"Not only that, we fed them."
"You had THAT much food?"
"Yes. Yes, son, we did."
"That must've been swell."
"That's right. It sure was. Careful, now. Don't fiddle with the cords, keep the net still. We don't want them to know we're up here. Mama needs us to be brave and...
In the darkened room, the bishop waited, staring out of the window into the dying sun. In the half-light, the Gothic buildings of the Old Town appeared as if bathed in blood. They would be soon.
The princess would come. Oh she might have sworn an oath of loyalty to her brother but in the end words were meaningless. Actions were what really counted. And in a kingdom where son could kill father, could sister not kill brother also?
She had already proved her ability. It was well known that she was one of the most able poisoners in the...