Midnight on the roof. The roof of one of the university buildings, to be exact.
"We've made it," he says. I nod, still woozy from the ascent.
It's dark, but I can make out his features by the light of the moon, and even if it was pitch-black, I would be able to hear the smile in his voice, the pride that comes from deep inside one's chest. When did I start paying this much attention to the way he spoke? It doesn't matter. What matters is that we're here, we've climbed this wall with our own strength and our...
She drove at a breakneck speed. Her sister sat in the backseat, reclined against him, eyes rolled up in awe. She turned the corner on two wheels, the screech of the tires raising demons from hell.
Halloween, an old car, her doting sister Cinderella, as stupid a princess as ever, wrapped up in the arms of a 57 year old vampire wannabe.
"HE'S 57!!!" She shouted as the car righted itself. "It's true!" her sister cooed.
"I'm sorry. 57!! and still dressed up as a vampire!"
She punched the gas on the straightaway. The green clock said 5am.
"Vampires are...
Dressed as a blue cow-like demon, the boy started taking pictures of the wall. The camera was heavy in his small ungloved hands. When he pressed the red button on the top an audible click could be heard and helped persuade him to take as many pictures as quickly as possible to hear that sound in rapid succession.
The camera was his fathers, an old one, one that was locked up until the recent garage sell his mother had. When she got to the box labeled 'Dave's' she sat on it and cried. It was a welcomed moment and she...
"What is it you have to do again?"
Richard pointed at the screen. "You have to get the butterflies to land on that tree."
"Which one, the one on the left?"
"No," he said, "the other one, the little one."
His son crossed his arms. "Dad, this game is so lame! I don't see how you could have played this thing. The graphics suck!"
"Hey, this is 16-bit resolution! You should have seen some of the old 8-bit side-scrolling games. The graphics on them were even worse, but they were all we had. And do you hear those sound effects?"...
"WOO HOO!!!"
Avat's heart raced as he tore through space in the Drakon II, his brother and the rest of their squad behind him. He ran his fingers along the control pad and the shuttle rotated quickly until he was "upside down" relative to the others. "Easy there Hot Shot," Vish chided. "This isn't a race. The controls just need a light touch."
Avat cursed under his breath. "Understood," he said louder and easily righted his ship. The Drakon, named for its resemblance to the beast of ancient mythology, and moved effortlessly in the vacuum of space, sending data directly...
Enigami rehtona dlrow erehw a tcefrep rorrim em si gnipyt na lacitnedi yrots. Rehtien ylurt erawa fo eht rehto, tub gnitcepsus taht srehwemoe a degnagleppor
pesuas wehn he deos. Lokos oevr his shoulder, smiles, and returns to type. Imagine the two in perfect unknowing symmetry, reaching a finger to press a key to flash the last word on the
SCREEN | NEERCS
blahblah fuck
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
Twice, in Singapore, she sat by a fountain.
Three times, in Kuala Lumpur, at three different locations, she waited by Banyan trees.
She was waiting. Always waiting.
She was waiting for me.
She didn't know that I knew that she was waiting for me, but enough money, in the right pockets, can keep me out of trouble. *Has* kept me out of trouble for the past four years. Kept me out of her hands. Out of the hands of the people who wanted to find me....
The bird landed. A thunder clapped. A dog barked and the bird opened a pocket on its vest.
Peering through a telescope, the yellow bird surveyed 360 degrees of the town square.
All along the square doors slammed and windows shuttered.
All but the doors of the saloon, which are more like shutters, really. Do saloons even have doors?
The bird shook its feathers. Focus.
From beneath the saloon shutters rolled a woman in pantaloons and suspenders and a blousy black turtleneck. She held in her hands two baskets, their covers carefully latched.
Kneeling in the street Liza double and...
Deep beneath our feet lies a maze of tunnels, crypts, secret passages, large and small pipes, cables, each layer added over the centuries dependent on current needs. For most of us we would only consider water pipes from the bathroom, utility wires, sewage. Our ancestors needed secret ways to travel undetected, our enemies wanted places to hide.
Jim looked down at the blueprint of the basement, the house renovation had taken far too long. The cellar in the right hand corner didn't seem to exist anymore all he could find was a rusty metal trunk full of strange photos, black...