Until now she'd never thought of herself as pretty. The unique medication, DNA time capsule designed especially allowed her to change the life path to the days before the car accident with Tom, her fiancee. It allowed her to view herself in the mirror and see the luscious lips, high cheek bones, startling blue eyes and finally believe she was attractive.
Back in her youth, every pimple, blackhead, red nose was agony. Comparisons to tv stars the norm.
She hoped there wouldn't be any side effects as she crossed the road on the way to buy a new dress forgetting...
Feeling like a fool, alone but still wondering how she looked, how she looked to other people. She should just allow it to die to apps on into whatever, darkness, light, next. she unfolded upward and took a picture, morbid and wrong the dust on her knees felt like it was teeming with death and life the circle of things. How to escape a forest it would be the title of her first and last book. Few would read she would place the first copy here next to a half remembered site where a corpse of something beautiful l once...
Th dapper man picked up a penny and turned it over in his fingers, scrutinising it.
"Yes, this is definitely his," he said, after some time.
"How do you know?" his companion prompted, with bemused admiration.
"We know our chap must have had a lucky penny. This one is worn, as if it has been rubbed many times - for luck, you see - but it is still dirty. Our chap is a dockhand; it is grime from his workplace that has become ingrained in the coin. He must have dropped it when he realised he was being pursued."
"How...
"I couldn't sleep with her next to me. Each night, I'd have a hard time trying to sleep. She was everything I could hope for and I stressed each night, as I'd try to drift off, that she'd realize one day I wasn't good enough for her. Thank god each morning she was there for me."
A married man, Tom, who lived outside of New York, was taking the train, as usual into town. Tom was married to Rosie. Margie, a friend of Rosie’s, who was also taking the train, saw him talking to a woman.
Tom appeared to be...
Her first Christmas back at home was a terrifying event. Someone named Aunt Martha kept hugging her, crying. She said the strangest things. She asked Shelly, "Do you remember me? You were just a baby the last time I saw you." Of course not, Shelly wanted to say. I couldn't possibly remember you if I was a baby, she thought. But this woman obviously loved her, like all the other people here.
Not like he loved her, but they did. They tried, bless their hearts, but it wasn't the same. They told her he was bad, that he took her...
It was midnight in the Temple of the Light, the sun was shining, and the Guru Akiva was smiling up at the man with the gun.
"Go ahead, child. Do it."
The man glanced around. Nobody to see him, tall, trench coat, barrel of the revolver pointed at the serene little monk as he sat, lotus-style, in the pavilion.
"Nothin' personal, old-timer." he managed to grunt. He didn't usually speak to the mark, but this guy, well, he figured the old man deserved an explanation. "The Council wants war, you see. The Temple, yer planet, it's... uh..."
"Sacred. Yes. You...
They think they can just buy me off.
They think that a lifetime's supply of biscuits and chew-toys is enough to purchase my silence. But they are wrong. I am the victim here, a victim of horrible negligence and criminal stupidity.
The researchers in the lab that day were operating sensitive equipment while violating the clearly defined safety procedures. My lawyer assures me that if we take my case to court, they'll be ruined. And that's just what's going to happen; I'm going to make them pay for what they did to me.
It boggles my small(er) mind; why would...
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...
Some people have never touched the snow, or swam in an ocean, or taken an elevator to a rooftop.
I once watched it snow on the ocean from a rooftop. I took the elevator to the lobby and walked out to the beach.
First I stood in a sandstorm. Then I ran in a snowstorm. Then I fell in the snow and the sand.
The snowflakes looked like stars falling from the night.
A crappy painting of a girl in headphones standing on the crest of a mountain, surrounded by butterflies. This is what passes for art these days? Seriously, thought Darren, I've seen better finger paintings.
As he made his way from picture to picture, Darren realized that art wasn't really his thing. Eventually, he made his way back to the entrance of the labyrinthine museum and stepped back out into the practical, utilitarian world of the city in which he lived.
Still thinking about the butterfly painting, Darren wandered through the streets of the bustling, monochrome city, occasionally bumping elbows with...