Shots were fired all around town. Poor innocent lives we're taken in a matter of seconds. They were taking over... everything. I had no idea if time permitted our family to move away before we lost our lives. Every night was a nightmare to hear about family friends getting captured and killed. My father tried his best to hide my sisters and I behind the dresser when we heard the soldiers coming closer. Behind the dresser was a hole in the cement wall which was big enough to fit us 3 kids. My mother looked at us everyday as if...
Autumn, 1923
“Would, I be fine?” I inquire softly to Māmā and Bà Bà.
“Don’t worry, just believe in yourself and ignore nasty comments.” My Māmā’s tone was silky and kind-hearted. She patted me softly on the back and kiss my forehead lightly to reassure me for all the pressure I have.
As I entered Shāmiàn island primary school with my two brothers and sister, I glanced at my Māmā and Bà Bà once more, waving ceaseless at them. So many emotions emerged from my mind; frightened, happy, determined and shocked. Nine hours of school and nine hours, not seeing...
They were listening. They children, huddled in the hallway on that November night, heard every word their parents said to one another. Well, yelled at one another. The children were used to the fights by now but this one sounded more serious. They were fighting over the money - as usual. Money had been tight lately and their father had been working extra hours just to stay away from the fighting. As the four children walked back to their bedrooms, they could still hear the words being thrown across the room between their parents. As they slipped into a fitful...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. What is he doing there? How did he get in here?! This is something I'd see in a movie and just be scared for the person sleeping in their bed. Now that person is me, awakened by the feeling that someone is watching me. You know the feeling? The one where you can just 'tell' that someone, somewhere, is looking at you?
That is what woke me from my slumber, as it were. Sleeping soundly, like any other night, I awoke disturbed. Sitting up in bed I wondered what was going...
The traitor looked at the girl with caramel coloured eyes through the bars of her cell. His glance paused at her bare breasts, then travelled up to meet her shimmering gaze.
"All you had to do was look the other way, and run with the rest of them," he said. "But no. Your stubborn principles got in the way and look where they have brought you."
The girl stared at him, whishing daggers in his eyes, his heart and his groin.
"Now, now," he said. "You don't seem too receptive to the guards advances. It's a shame, things would be...
Waves.
Thats all I saw. Waves, waves, waves.
Just little curves in the ocean, that broke down and collapsed into themselves.
I shiver, and take a tentative sip of the warm coffee he had given me. He shouldn't have come. But I let him; It had been so simple and easy.
The coffee's bitter taste makes me feel like I'm in the ocean itself, a wondrous part of the world that still remains unexplored.
I am that. I am unexplored.
I walk along the shoreline, divulging in the darkness of the sky and the silentness of the air. I think...
This fallen world or the next on. It is hard to be entirely sure of anything; gravity, what to have for breakfast, whom one should marry - fuck
kill
We stick our heads out too far and we expose ourselves in ways we could not have guessed at the beginning when we were warm floating. We forget how to float when we learn how to swim and sometime soon we will learn how to drown - or let go.
This fallen world or the next one. The choice is just as banal as it sounds. But some nights it is...
An unknown figure watched Mery and Arthur McGee as they shopped in main square. Mery, hair tied back, long coat wrapped around her to fight the cold, a scarf tucked around her neck, approached the front store window and glanced in awe at the woman behind the glass. Her hair coiled around her face in romantic ringlets, and her long black dress oozed with classic beauty.
"Arthur, isn't this dress marvelous? Look at the color, and the sweeping length. I must have it, Arthur. I must." Mery said in delight.
Arthurt, her husband, was less than enthused. "Dear, it's...
I think it's number nine. Eight maybe. All I know is my face is slightly tingled.
"Another," she asks as she walks past me.
I give an affirming nod. She has to know I am nearing my limit, but I have learned to play this off well.
"You had the Green Line, right?"
I nod again.
The Cubs are on, and they are losing. Nothing new there.
A couple sits in the corner talking about important couple things.
Two friends sit the right of me, discussing how much their lives and the Cubs suck.
The glass ends up in front...
The ghost girls kept appearing on the photographs. Even on the really old one of my grandfather.
I wasn't that concerned, it was bound to be an effect of those new pills from the doctor. The leaflet had a million and one side effects including hallucinations.
On my seventy first birthday all the family were round my house and I was just blowing out the candles on the three level chocolate cake when there was a pounding on the door.
Police.
They took me into the kitchen and closed the door. Sparing the rest of the family the embarasssment of...