I had been running for just over an hour, almost breathless. Whose idea was it to train for this marathon anyways? I've always liked running, but never really enjoyed it, you know? There are only so many routes you can take. This time, I decided to say screw the concrete jungle, I'm going to take this somewhere different. So I took to the hills, as they say. Not gonna lie, it was much more interesting than running on pavement. The damp grass under my shoes, the crunching of the twigs, all that good stuff. I stopped at the top of...
In memory of Sanvee Ali, age 5.
He will be remembered in our home and in our hearts.
I'm dead. Really dead. Not int he " there'll be a twist int he end and ill be saved kind of way. Just dead.
Something things you just know, and I knew by the growing pool of blood that it was over. Dying doesn't t hurt like you would think. I mean, yeah, it isn't fun, but the pain from being wounded, it dissipates.
I can't talk anymore. Breathing is sort of hard, and I can't lift my hands, but I can see, and I can hear, and I can hear the squeaky little cries. I can see my sister,...
Thou wanted to enjoy his iced latte
Thou wanted to bring the mood down in this joint
Thou wanted these tourists to be gone
Be gone tourists!
Thou forsakes thee!
Tourists
Poseurs
Wanna bees
Beardos
Thou is the grumbly heart of your demise
Thou is real
Really real
So frightening
So fucking real
Thou is not on tourist maps
Pamphlets
Brochures
Thou will burn away all this fake tourist bullshit
Thou will bring the mood down
in
this
joint
The sun brushed against the back of her neck as she walked towards the corral. Her hands fidgeted with the rope, looping it and unlooping it, her fingers running along the rough hemp braids, pausing at the bands of electrical tape marking hand holds.
Gus held his hand out to help her up onto the fence as she reached the edge of the corral, a smile splitting his tanned face. "You ready?" he asked, his voice a hoarse rasp.
She nodded as she reached the top of the fence. Inside the corral, her horse stood saddled, its side pressing against...
They were listening. Their ears pressed up against the wall. She held her breath, the clock ticked. Her boyfriend huffed and rolled his eyes. She glared at him and held a finger to her mouth. He was about to speak when it started again.
The yelling, this time it was followed by a crash. Then the low voices. It was odd, it wasn't the usual commotion they heard from the neighbors. The man's voice was urgent, the woman's angry.
Straining, she shifted her weight so she could better press her ear against the wall and when that didn't work she...
"I hope we never grow up," Kate said.
"We will," answered Petra, "But we don't need to grow old."
The memories of that day forty years ago raged like a swollen river in Kate's mind. They had been 10 years old, dressed up in her mother's too large dresses, jackets and hats. They had a tea party and Mr. Bear was making some very funny jokes. Dolly was being quiet and nibbling at her cookies. But Petra was singing and dancing.
"I'll marry a handsome man who will take me to dances in castles," she had said.
A tear pooled...
"Peasants," he thought, and stuck his pitchfork into a square of hay.
"What do they know about building a good, angry mob?"
He hoisted the bale onto a workbench and began teasing handfuls of straw out, putting them in neat piles.
He came from a family of mob organizers and leaders. Three generations of good, strong men who knew how to lead a group of frothing townsfolk up mountain passes, across fields and to the front gates of witches, evil doctors and foreign-born ne'r do-wells.
The secret to a good mob was in staying organized. Make sure everybody's got something...
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...
The dapper man picked up a penny. He rolled it around in his fingers, enjoying the coolness of it. It was raining, and he had had only seen it because the bronze colour had shone up in the middle of a shallow puddle.
The dapper man remembered a rhyme he had heard when he was tiny. See a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck. He thought there might be more to it than that, but that was enough for now. He had a Very Important Meeting to go to that afternoon, and if a bit...