She looked at the words on the page. 'It was a pleasure to burn.' She read them upside down, glancing sneakily across the dark wooden table at the book open in front of her fellow library user. Kelly needed to get to work, she'd had a number of extensions already granted on her final essay, she had to get finished this week. But she couldn't take her eyes off the person in front of her. She was acting oddly, not turning the page, staring at that one sentence. Then, a giggle escaped the girl's lips and she flung her head...
We sat silently in the bunker. We received the call a few hours ago. HQ could not send back up, and the horde was descending on our location.
We held a massive attack on the base last week, but after that was thrown at us, we lost too many men to stay. But we did, as our orders were to do so.
Those bugs just would not stop coming, and apparently they hatched new creations. This time, they will win.
Julio smokes and Johnson just stares at the ground. The bunker could hold for an hour, maybe. We secured the...
Snip. Snip.
Pause.
Snip snip snip.
He squinted into the test tube. The stems of heather floated in the solution of sodium dodecyl sulfate, suspended, waiting.
Laughing at him.
Gene closed his eyes. No, he thought, not now. Not after all this. Not when I'm so close.
Flashback to the grimy street where he was born, eleventh child to a drunk and a slattern. When he dared say that he would grow up to be a scientist one day, oh how the neighborhood toughs had loved it. Another reason to pound him, day after day. "Gene, Gene the gene-machine, work...
Rupert sat gazing at the majestic mountains, but the only thought in his mind was, "Why did I have to have so many girls?" He was surrounded by femininity, enveloped, cocooned, suffocated. The son he'd longed for had never materialized, and the only other male companionship to be had in his own house was the manservant. Conversations with the help of more than a perfunctory nature were obviously out of the question.
So the women swarmed around him, but at least here he wasn't shrouded in lace and rose colored silk - though he'd need to speak to his...
She leaned over, sideways from her stool, all tits and lips and curly hair falling in his direction.
"Got a light," she asked, sticking a cigarette in the corner of her painted mouth.
He set his beer down, just foam left and dug into his right pocket. Pulled out a lighter and slid it across the plywood painted like mahogany bar. She looked at the lighter, and moved her lips into a pout. Leaned in even closer and said "A gentleman would light it for me."
"You're in the wrong place if you're looking for gentlemen," he grunted, looking straight...
One day a man called Gilbert played with small electrical appliances, he named this activity "duckery". He played so much his fingers became paranoid. This paranoia soon ran from his fingertips straight to his heart. After a couple of weeks he noticed a strange, yet, comfortable feeling in his upper right shoulder, he called this "proper". Proper became so "happening" that he made up words like "happening" and "bloodthirsty". But things started to take it's toll on poor old Gilbert. He lost his confidence in playing with small electrical appliances. He became depressed and fell in a coma, he named...
To run was the only thing he could do. He couldn't escape the overwhelming feelings.
He couldn't escape the overwhelmingly heavy burden of the path he was given. It was his path, yes. Or was it a shared path? He suspected it was, but there was no one who could verify it. No one. He was Forrest Gump, just running. And the Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory was his reward. Momma said life was a series of bumps-- raised sheaves of sidewalk to step over or turn around and avoid. So he runs.
It was a picture to burn.
His arm was wrapped around her waist and they were cheek to cheek, grinning like fools at the blank eye of the camera. Her arms were flung around his neck, a laugh frozen on her lips as they stood, all dressed down for a summer evening together, in her driveway.
She carefully held it to the candle flame and watched the smooth paper blacken and burn. Watched the image slowly eaten away to ash that fell like dark snow over the candle.
The dusting of ash of what had been her life: lies, broken...
"Of all the times my back has to go out, it decides to do it with a freaking hurricane coming," Susan fumed. "I haven't even had time to board up the windows or glue down the silverware."
The dark storm clouds crept closer and closer and closer to her home.
"Why is that godforsaken mailbox so far from the house?" she cried, needing to focus her frustration at being completely helpless on something, on anything.
Susan tried to stretch out her back, tried to stand up, but the pain snapped at her lower back lips whips. She cried out, hoping...
It was there in the cold, I didn't beleive what I was seeing at first. I felt the chill that he must have felt, tasted the salt that he must have tasted and beneath my feet felt the soft caress of the sand as the rushing tide pulled the sand from under me.
It was a hat, that was all that was left soaked in brine and covered in seaweed.
I could picture him, pulling off his clothes with a cold determination on a warm summers day. In sight of noone he walked to the bin and buried them underneath...