"The day after tomorrow, this will all be over. I will stop being sick, I will no longer be a whale. I will be able to touch my toes again. Heck, I'll be able to see my toes again.
"I'll have a tiny body to care for. I will no longer be a me, but an us. I was an us once, but now I'm a me. But the day after tomorrow, I will be an us again. I will be stop being sick. Did I mention that? Maybe. I will be able to look at food without retching. I...
She opened the envelope and screamed.
A thumb fell out.
But whose thumb was it?
Wasn't hers.
Wasn't mine.
Wasn't her husband's.
She checked each of her children's fingers and toes.
All twenty of them.
When she was assured that all the digits she cared about were accounted for, she stopped shaking.
What a lousy piece of mail.
Who would send her such a thing?
Had she made any enemies lately?
Was this a warning?
Maybe they got the wrong address.
She checked the front of the envelope.
Envers Household
1234 Lane
Somewhere, City USA
That was her address alright....
If I had a box full of pounds from every time someone said if I had a pound for every time
It would probably have like £50 in it
Because although that's a common phrase
It doesn't come up THAT often
Think about it
How many times have you actually heard someone use that phrase
Probably like fifty
Yeah?
I thought so
So next time
Put a pound somewhere you can forget it
And then when you find it
You'll remember this story
And that way
As long as you are alive
So am I
And if you told it...
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...
The giant knelt, and threaded the palm trees through his fingers. Lifted his hand slowly, snapping the thinner branches, but not the strongest, fruit baring limbs. He cupped the six or seven coconuts he pulled free and shook them.
The giant's thumb flicked the coconuts into his mouth one at a time. The shells crunched weakly between his teeth.
He finished his handful and set about feeling around the tips of the trees for another. A monkey watched him and sat there trying to figure out a way to profit from this situation, without
It was within reach.
She just had to keep walking.
The key was to never stop.
Her heart was beating.
Her breath caught in her throat and she choked back a sob.
It had to be here.
Her arms were outstretched as she fumbled through the forest, moving as quickly as she dared over the treacherous ground.
Her shoulders shook as a her fear racked her whole body.
Her back stayed straight and her chin stayed strong, even as her spirit faltered.
They would not have lied to her surely.
They wouldn't have been that cruel.
They couldn't have been....
Until now, she never thought of herself as pretty.
Each morning she would stare in the mirror and try to pick one good feature of herself, different from the day before. It was never difficult for her, she liked the color of her eyes and the thickness of her hair but until this moment, she had never felt put together.
But in this moment, with the boy of her dreams watching her descend down the staircase in a gorgeous white dress, she felt pretty.
She felt the tears welling up in her eyes as she passed her Grandmother and felt...
This dream was better than waking. Like many others-- She was there. She looked different in every dream, talked different, had a different name; but she was the same person every time. She was an aspect of me, who I wish I could be, who I knew I never could be.
Except in the dream. While I was still the awkward, shy man I always was, in my dream I could share dinner with a woman who had all the qualities I wanted. She could talk without feeling nervous. She was ambitious, no regrets of /not/ doing something. And, of...
My life has always been a mess. First, my parents get into a big fight and are now divorced. Then I had no choice but to go live with my cruel mother. But life changed when she gave me that hug. When she made me feel loved. Ha, that rhymes! But it was when my college axeption came that my mom started to show affection towards me. It was uncomfortable, at first. But now it's part of what makes me move on from all those times she made me feel small, and unimportant to her. Now, that I'm married and...
It was the fall that surprised me the most. We worked together for years on the 82nd floor of Tower two, and when I knew we couldn't get to the bottom I knew he'd want to go to the top. I agreed immediately even though I knew he had a plan, he always had a plan. I was too busy not thinking clearly to think clearly, about what this plan would would to do us, how it would end, how we could survive.
For the last minute of his life, the terror was gone. His smile didn't surprise me, I...