Some days you feel every second of your age. Becca looked at the balloons in her hand and back towards the building. Seven years hard labor, or so it felt, and she was still working in the same department in the same job for the same company.
A breeze lifted her hair and tugged at the balloons. They struggled against her grip, the ribbons seesawing in her hand as if each wished for freedom.
"What are you doing, Becca?" The voice reached out to her but the woman stared up at the floating orbs. The sun glowed through them and...
As Darvo walked into the glaring sunset on the western horizon ahead of him, he wondered to himself about the Yoga studio he passed by minutes ago. There were so many beautiful women in there doing flexible things that he knew that his own body was not capable of.
Darvo had actually passed by that same Yoga studio almost every day for the past six months when he took up a job as a salesman at the screen door factory next door.
Everytime he walked by, on his way home, he made a point to look inside the window of...
Private Morlane glanced at the watch that he'd taken off and left on the small table by his cot, rubbing his sleep-weary eyes as he noticed what time it was. Fifteen minutes until dawn, or at least until when dawn was slated to be, according to all of the records that he had read over the last few mornings.
The last few mornings had been early ones. They were camped next to a large farm, with a broken-down wooden fence surrounding the grounds, where a large rooster loved to perch at sunrise and crow so loudly that every living thing...
I had finished drawing. The picture a beautiful representation of her body. I told her that I was done, she decided not to put her clothes back on. I twisted the drawing board around and she smiled. I smiled in turn and told her it was an excellent drawing, and she was an excellent model. She blushed. She said it was my turn and I was confused. She emphasized a bit more and I knew. She asked if I was uncomfortable doing so and I told her no. She took a blank piece of paper. sitting there naked made me...
I step back and look. It seems complete.
Ms. Johnson comes over and looks at it. She barely glances before saying, "Wonderful, wonderful. Fantastic job." She's forgotten my name again. I doubt she'll ever remember.
I leave it on an easel and walk out of the classroom. No one looks back at me. No one calls my name or asks me to meet them at their lockers. I keep walking. Soon I am beyond the reach of our cloistered middle school existence into worlds beyond. High schoolers pass by. None of them look at me either. They have their own...
"Two-thousand-seventy bottles of beer on the wall, two-thousand and seventy bottles of beeeeeer. Take one down, pass it around, two-thousand-and-sixty-nine bottles of beer on the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaall."
Johnny steps down from the stage to thunderous, silent applause. A few faces are comically stunned. Most are arranged in various expressions of disgust.
I'm sure the patrons of the Poet's Society were hoping for better lyrics from the Frontman of the Year. I walk hurriedly to the publicist to begin my explanation. Should I go for the cancer, the break-up, the drugs, or the booze option? I'm sure that's what everyone's thinking anyway....
There was blood on my pillow. Along with a few small feathers. And upon closer inspection, there was also a long white whisker, and what I could only guess was a foot. I could be absolutely certain by just picking it up, but getting home from work ready to crash from a nap that was now being delayed did not lend itself to doing anything other than being infuriated.
Where the hell had Sebastian managed to catch a bird when I had all the windows and doors closed and locked?
"AAAAUGH! SEBASTIAN!" I whirled out of the room, shouting at...
"Why the rush?"
A hand grazes the back of my neck, pulling my hair away. Warm breath sticks to the back of my ear and the skin of my neck. I stiffen. That voice is so familiar. I hear a shift to my right and then feel a hand wrap around mine. I jerk it to my side.
"What's the matter?"
I barely hear the words when my body shudders it's disgust. My eyes squeeze shut and I take a step forward. Then two steps. Then three. I don't stop at the door or at the road or anything. I...
Malcolm's coo became a cry. The big hands came, to sweep him up, into the dark, cradled, into the big arms. And his cries, despite himself and the rage that swelled within him, subsided.
The big arms swayed, the soft sounds soothed, and Malcolm rocked, he swum, he spun. His arms too small too tired, his legs useless and swaddled up. He liked the rocking, it eased the ache of his anger. It reminded him of the wheel.
The spinning wheel of endless endless, the wheel of flame, where his candle was relit, where his heart was reforged. From the...
Despite the obvious instructions, the young boy turned from the class prompt and began scribbling furiously on the sheet of lined, college-ruled paper. First an eye, then another. Two ears — no, wait, make it three — and a cruel mouth. Fangs and something like a tongue, long and sharp and forked. A ferrety neck protrudes awkwardly into shoulders and a pair of thin, hairy arms extend from these.
He squints with intention, his hand begins hurting from gripping the number two pencil so hard. A messy hand and another goes onto the page. Four fingers on one, three on...