The wheels on the gurney squeaked in time to the beat of his heart. He had forgotten to tell Mary and the kids something. He'd told Johnny and Sarah to mind their mom's words, to study hard, get good grades, everything you'd want to tell your children in 6 minutes before they wheeled you off into heart surgery. This time, will it take? Will I finally get the heart that belongs to me or will my body reject it, another hope dashed, another disappointment in its place. Another list, more waiting, more drugs, another death. Mary, he'd forgotten to kiss...
Martin put the off-white china mug to his thin lips and took a long drink of his rapidly cooling coffee. His eyes scanned over the classified ads for the hundredth time but, once again, there was nothing. Nothing in his field, nothing in his area, nothing, nothing, nothing. The pen poised in his right hand tapped against the page angerly and he took another mouthful, swishing the lukewarm liquid between his cheeks.
"Good morning, pumpkin." Candice's bare feet padded along the bare hardwood behind him, and Martin soon found his girlfriend's arms wrapped tightly around his chest, her face buried...
Our eyes locked right before she went for the stuffed duck. I watched her bite it with resolution, shake her head back and forth like a dog. Her eyes met mine again with a clear and concise message: "My duck."
The duck became her best friend. I hardly talked to her unless she was eating my food. Then I yelled. It probably wasn't the most mature thing to do.. but what the hell. I fell in love from afar. I fell in love with her maple brown eyes, with her glistening nose, with her adorable whimper. She didn't know it...
We take the ability to breathe for granted. It's the basic function that keeps us alive, you would have thought that we would keep a closer eye on it, that we would pay attention to how many lungfuls of air we consume every day. But we don't. We don't think about that mundane process because that is not the element of breathing that adds a spark to life; it is the thieves that trade in such banal fare that creates the interest.
For a breath once stolen is never forgotten. Whether it be by the view from a hill over...
Flan in the face, flan in the face, flan in the face.
A wild grin stretched across his face, an expression of pure exuberance, of joy and abandon, just before the pie tin splattered the gelatinous goo all over his tweed coat.
The students were gathered outside the lecture hall, sprawling in the hundreds in the oppressive heat. Here and there, groups had clustered beneath the maple branches, trying desperately to stave off exhaustion. They had been at it for two days already: the most notorious sit-in in America's higher educational history.
As if to further puzzle the wayward boomers...
In hindsight, the solution was obvious. I had gone through all the facts, interrogated every suspect, and analyzed all possible theories and evidence. I had them all assembled in the den of the immense estate. Lady Distala was a nervous wreck, nibbling her lovely filed nails and shivering slightly, though the room was warm. "I am aware that all of you know that a crime has been committed in this very home, a mere few hours past. Mr. Edward Leston was found murdered in the back garden at around two o'clock. I have asked all my questions of you, and...
She peered over her laptop screen, wishing that during her youth she had plucked her eyebrows into a thin line like her mother's - they always managed to make her look more stern than she every really was.
Right now, she would have given anything to be able to pull that off.
Somehow she'd managed to get the class quiet and at least convinced them into acting as though they were doing their work. But it had been a hard battle.
It wasn't that she viewed her entire career as a teacher as a war, just this class, and a...
They were trapped for seven days.
And all he could think about was how stupid and incompetent everyone was. Oh, he could get them out if he wanted to. He'd figured out how in the first 10 minutes the lights went out, the tracks stopped moving, and the world stopped spinning.
But he figured he'd rest down here, in this quiet place where people were sobbing their regrets, anger, pity, sorrow, prayers to each other. Lamenting their pathetic lives as they neared their starved deaths. He could smell the piss by the corner where they'd all mutually agreed to designate...
i had a dream. It was so weird! I dreamt is was in a truck cruising down the highway. I looked up at the driver and said "Where am i?" He turned around, slow, very slow. I gasped. He was a cat! a gray tabby with neon eyes. "Why am i here?" i asked, thinking that, hey this was a dream. if this cat can drive, then maybe he can talk too. he opened his mouth. "Meow?" was all that came out. So much for the "if he can drive, he can talk" theory. I sat up. We were driving...
She'd have preferred the electric chair. She'd always been a fan of electricity. She recalled the first time her mother had given her a knife and set her down in front of the light socket. "Go on...Stick it in there good now honey" her mother had told her. And the jolt. Wow. Margaret knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life from that very first light socket. Electricity would be her calling. And boy did she answer that call.
As a young girl she would put on shows for the kids on the block by hopping in the...