Martin Adams began to type. He wasn't sure what to say; a fact that the repeated DELETES and EDITS made clear. Love letters were so much simpler in the pre-computer days. You'd write what you felt, scrunch about 3/4 of the pages up and throw them next to, if not in, the bin. Then you would belabour whether to post the thing. Sometimes you would, then regret it. Sometimes you wouldn't, then regret it. Now all he had to do was click SEND. Or not. Not click SEND that is.
Martin wished he'd managed to set up that clever thing...
The building was out of place and yet appropriate at the same time. Sarah was the only one who seemed to notice it either way. An old pagaoda-like structure in the middle of the town. Other people were nearby, but if they saw it, they didn't act like it.
After snapping a few photos with her smart phone, she approached one of the entrances. (At least she assumed it was an entrance.) She knocked on the door several times. There was no answer, but it swung open for her nonetheless. She looked around at the park, and the people in...
They were trapped for seven days. The airlocks were blinking green and somewhere in the deck below, the supports creaked and machinery rumbled. My little brother continued playing his hand-held game, while the rest of us tried to make contact with other ships.
We were floating above the 3rd moon, it's deep northern crater eying us like an angry cyclops. We had barely made it through the atmosphere before the alarms went off and the ship stopped. Somehow, we had been flagged with contraband and the authorities were on their way up, checking through the nether regions first.
A message...
Freddy knew once he'd started to hallucinate he was Napoleon that he'd smoked a joint too far. Or Allison had sneaked something strange in there. His mouth tasted of ash and flecking leaves.
We're all eating cake! he shouted. He couldn't hear very well in his left ear, it seemed to echo there. His voice was strange. Tiny, as if he were a mouse.
Agatha, who was currently drinking blood from a wineglass, told him that was the wrong thing to say. He wasn't Marie, now was he? And even then that wasn't what she really said.
Freddy didn't care...
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
That's the sound of the horn that Stacey heard every night, at all hours. Seems her neighbor's boyfriend always wanted to pick her up at all hours of the night.
Now, Stacey didn't care what people did with thier time. She didn't care what her neighbor and her boyfriend did whenever they went out. She didn't even care what time they did any of this. The problem was her neighbor's boyfriend couldn't seem to lay off the horn.
Tonight, Stacey got home with an attitude. Her inbox at work never seemed to see the...
1943
(19:43 to be exact, but the : had given up life years ago)
30 oC
1943
29 oC
1944
The red LEDs blinked their cycling transmission of temperature and time. Next to a pealing sticker announcing "Efe Tur" as the owner of this otobüs, no doubt more faded by continuous display, was our destination, Esenler, the second step to Istanbul and Atatürk Airport. Where check in had started already. If by some miracle, time could be made up, more steps would lead home, many hours later.
The journey to Izmit had been more enjoyable, as this one was an...
OF SEXY. HE HAS THE PERFECT MUSCLE. WHEN HE HOLDS ME I MELT. HE IS CHARMING AND GIVING. HE MAKES ME FEEL SO PERFECT. I LOVE IT WHEN I CATCH HIM STARING. THE SMILE HE GIVES ME EVERY TIME HE SEE'S ME. HIS LAUGH IS LOUD. HE IS MY FAIRYTALE ENDING. HE IS MY PRINCE CHARMING. HERE TO TAKE ME AWAY THE PERFECT LIFE. LIVING IN HAPPINESS AND WORRY FREE. LIVING IN THE LAND OF LOVE.
"I shot my butler." I threw the manuscript across the room. Grabbed a scotch. No. Wait. Wanted a scotch, grabbed a bourbon. Drank it anyway. What kind of a piss-poor story ends with "I shot my butler?"
It was Fight Club, that's what did it. I think. All this unreliable narrator business. The publishing world hasn't been the same since, filled with hacks trying to seem clever with these terrible twist endings. It's almost unbearable.
I polished off my bourbon. Still wanted scotch. Rang for Jeffrey. The house is too big, I can't be expected to go all the way...
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.
He sat in the corner with that look on his face, that look that said, I am about to speak.
"Let's get up and go."
I felt so sick, my joints ached, my mouth felt like it had been dry since the moment I was born. I got up anyway. There was no point resisting.
"We've gotta hustle." He said preemptively thwarting the gleam of protest he already suspected.
"But I'm so tired, baby." I said, hoping in vain that he would go for me.
We got off the cold floor without another word. I threw up on the way...