I'm in luuu-uv with a ro-bot
An' I just can't stop
Got a feelin' he's a bad lot
But he gets me over the top
It was loud. It was *bad*. It was everywhere. It was augmented by neon lights in rainbow colors and, somehow, the voices and laughter bouncing off all the hard surfaces in here.
So, this, apparently, was a bar.
"Relax," Maya muttered at her side. "You look like a nun in need of Ex-Lax."
"This isn't what I had in mind," Elizabeth hissed back. "What the hell in the phrase 'a quiet night somewhere' made you...
The gate closed behind them. Ahead of them stood the fearsome Morley house, said to be haunted with the ghosts of the former occupants, who had been killed years ago.
Jana, the youngest of the four, turned pale. "Are you sure it's safe to be here?"
The second-oldest, Robert, scoffed, "There's no such thing as ghosts."
"I'm more worried about Dad finding out we're not in bed," Jason, the second-youngest, said.
"You guys are such wusses. C'mon!" Angela, the oldest, ran up the hill to the house, opening the door. As soon as she stepped in, though, she ran out...
The room was dark and hazey that morning. Im sure the night before that had been filled with booze, girls and college antics was the cause of the dry, drpessed feeling.
My proffessors voice piecrced like a knife in my skull as he said "You have six minutes to write a story. GO!" My hand gripped the chewed No. 2 pencil as I scramble to write everything about nothing.
My mind raced at the pace of a hungry slug as I stamered to think of somthing to write.
My writing skills are poor, I have limited ideas and my grammer...
the city was empty
winter empty, not
summer empty
snowstorm home-bound, not
bound for Myrtle Beach, or
flown to Florida or
wherever the hell
the neighbors went.
Christ, doesn't anyone stay
home anymore?
Sit on the deck in frayed nylon
beach chairs?
I can't even find them in
the stores anymore.
what happened?
where did everyone go?
it's the city...
it should
never
be
empty.
Good night…
Good morning…
Good afternoon…
Chet had to find his own fun while working as a department-store greeter. Sometimes he said “Good evening” instead of “Good night” to the fancier-looking customers. Sometimes he said it to the disreputable customers, too, but a bit sarcastically, to see if they’d pick it up on it. They usually didn’t.
Every now and then Chet would greet someone with the wrong time of day. “Good afternoon, sir,” he’d say, as the sun was peeking over the mountains. “Good night, ma’am,” while the sun was burning hot overhead. And usually people just continued on...
The hillsides have been finger-painted
with Larch trees turning yellow
like smears from a child's hand
that Mother Nature will bleach away within the month
I stare, thinking there must be a pattern to it.
Birds eating seeds from cones and dropping them in flight?
Early colonizers after a fire?
Unwilling to believe in beauty without structure and reason
Dusk arrives with its gift of quiet
As if hosting it here in this small moment of time required recompense.
A perfect moment of stillness
before I turn to go inside and life's motions begin again
I couldn't sleep with her next to me. Her gentle snoring, calming to almost anyone else, was absolutely maddening to me. It was nails being dragged down a chalkboard, squealing and begging for everyone for miles to be quiet long enough for the mouse dragging its nails to be heard.
I wasn't in love with her. I didn't even love her, not for even the briefest of moments. A marriage of convenience? Who was this marriage convenient for? I knew that she slept with other men behind my back and, conversely, I knew that I slept with other men behind...
I...
I...I'm not sure what to say.
Lola.
God. Just the name. Just reading the name - a word, really and I'm gone. Just gone.
Do I actually remember her anymore? Sometimes, I wonder about that. Sometimes I think that what takes me away, what takes all ability to think or feel anything beyond the word, the name - LOLA...isn't really her at all.
There's this insidious thought that it's not her at all, but just what I always wanted her to be. And wouldn't that be the final victory? That I'm tormented by what I tried to make her...
It had been three weeks now, to the day, that Mira James had been absent from class. Mrs. Pendleton sighed with regret as she rubbed Mira's name off of her desk. Truancy was a sad reality that she was powerless to stop, and the school always needed to make room for new students.
She rummaged gingerly through the shelf, searching for the pile of junk that seemed to accumulate in every seventh-grader's desk. It would all be in the trash soon, leaving room for the next student's pencils, stickers, and other belongings.
It was empty. Clean, even. With a frown,...
They had come up this mountain every wensday evening for the last three years, from the creation of there IOGT-lodge. The first one in this country and now there outdoor meetings was to come to an end. The lodge house was soon to be finished and there common soberity had a place to live
Indeed in a hundred years another generation will look at this photo and now the story some even beeing related to the heroic pioners of the movement.
How the small movement for soberity started in New York state now lived on and inspired so many generations...