Kent was stabbing someone. I think it was Mary. Maybe it was Bill. I don't know. The important thing is that it was a person and he or she was in the process of being killed by Kent, who everyone called "The Guy Who Likes to Stab People." Once he tried to stab Tony buy Tony was wearing chainmail so it didn't work. Later they went for figs.
Kent finished stabbing the person, who then died. The person was red, slick with blood. I didn't know if it was a man or woman. When he was done, Kent wiped his...
Freewrite had been studying the whole damned week.
It was a chaotic week, filled with dark-roast coffee and cotton sweaters, self induced wakefulness like a ritual. Now, it was Thursday, and Freewrite still hadn't completed his research. He sat groggily, frustrated, hunched over a dark cup of coffee with a pen in his hand and a book to his left.
On the other side of the desks were threescore discarded books that had offered little relevance to him. Friday was tomorrow. Freewrite looked at his wristwatch. It was already 9:58 pm.
Freewrite realized that his thesis was due the morning...
She'd always come running when I called.
It didn't matter what it was, she always came. At first, it was out of gratitude, I had taken her off the streets, gave her a home, food and clothes, but lately, I've been re-thinking my position. I couldn't be considered her guardian, for she was about the same age as me. She wasn't my lover, for our relationship rarely went beyond providing her with what she needed, while the rest of the time she rested, healing from her injuries. But I found myself, awake at night, asking myself when I'd be rewarded,...
Swing.
I would sneak out my window at night when both my parents were asleep. I'd walk the block and a half to the schoolyard, sit in the middle swing of the playground and sing to myself until he got there. Then he'd push me gently to and fro while we talked about the day, about tomorrow, and the tomorrows after that.
Swing.
We met that way for a year until his parents found out and installed alarms on all their windows and doors. They thought it was drugs, or teenage trouble he was after. But it was just to...
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...
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs. Michelle lay there in a drunken, unconsious heap.
"Ok, how are we going to get her up to bed?" sighed Peter.
"You're going to carry her." said Natasha, flatly.
"No, not again. I didn't move into his houseshare just to spend my Saturday mornings carrying my alchy housemates around". said Peter.
Natasha turned towards Peter and said in a hushed tone, "She's not alcoholic, she's just not over Steven yet".
"He dumped her 2 months ago!"
Suddenly, there was some movement beneath Michelle's still body.
Peter and Natasha peered beneath the stairs again...
In 1921, he flew from the Great Rift Valley. That was the foundation of his reputation. Whispered, announced, stated, introduced, it always provided a collective puckering of lips, a breathing of "oohs" and then sips of champagne as fingers were taken into hand, and warm, hearty pats on the back offered. What a way to enter a party, what a ticket into every party!
He never tired of these parties, the compliments on his swarthy, sun embraced flesh, and the women who plucked at his sleeves and asked what it was like up there, racing against clouds. A man could...
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...
Tom said my neck tasted of honey. When I told Jasper he laughed hysterically, dropping the crystal glass of champagne onto the thick white carpet. Snorting like a horse, slapping his black Parisian jeans, contorting his face like a fairground mirror image. I didn't think it was so funny but didn't say anything. I laughed too.
One thing that Jasper would never know about me is how lonely and disgusted I feel with myself when I tell him about Tom.
When I walked away from the car, turned back and waved at Tom who had wiped the condensation from the...
Water. Surrounded her from every direction on the huge cruise ship. She loved being out in the ocean, looking out as far as she could see and seeing nothing but water.
Her husband, on the other hand...
"Honey, please get up. Open your eyes and see!"
He shook his head, grasping tighter to his paper bag. "Shouldn't have allowed you to talk me into this...never should have listened to you."
She sighed, thinking her husband sounded so sickly and confused. Sad thing is he never threw up, loaded up on motion sickness meds weeks in advanced, and he barely felt...