Her breath rose from her body in swirls of ash. The air wheezed from her as you would expect the air would travel through a burnt husk of a body. Each night she burned, crumbling into herself, waking in a bright fury with the morning sun. Some called her a phoenix, a goddess of the volcano, Pelée.
I was a lowly stream, trembling, trickling in her wake. The heat of her caused my innards to boil, and the creatures would leave me. The earth heaved with her breath, the tumbling rocks rolling, the sparks floating away with the grace of...
£18000 was how much it was going to cost to get him out of jail. Such is the price for public indecency in front of the queen.
It wasn't even that it was so...indecent. It was more along the lines of public infantilism. We'd both been to London before, and we had done all the touristy things, all the things that young men with wild oats were desperately in need of doing, but this time, Adam took it too far.
Adam, he of the propensity for humping things, took one look at the Royal Guard, and in a moment of...
Never before had he witnessed such decadence. In every direction he sees strangers from a planet he has not lived on. They do not share his world. Humongous flashing screens paint the slopes of this urban valley with a grotesque LCD glow, electrifying the smoggy night and blotting out constellations he was accustomed to observing. A foreign land indeed.
They had told him about these men, and their women and children, of their social clubs and religious events and twenty-four-hours-a-day informational overload. He had watched the training videos explaining how to communicate in their language, how to mimic their gestures...
One scoop chocolate, one scoop... The ice cream scoop clatters on the counter top, empty. I stare at the perfectly rounded scoop of flawlessly smooth chocolate ice cream sitting in the dark blue bowl as if it might jump out and bite me. I imagine the ice cream breaking down into tiny little calories and attaching themselves to my thighs, my stomach, my arms, my face, forming rolls of soft fat on my body. The ice cream falls with a soft plunk back in the tub. With a snap, the lid takes away my guilt and I shove it to...
Absent. The perfect word to describe the situation.
Paul and Maria Strickland sat at their kitchen table eating breakfast, as they did every day. Forks scraped against plates as they lifted their scrambled eggs to their mouths, chewed, swallowed. All in silence. They'd been married for twenty years, eating in silence together for fifteen. Eating in silence was the only thing they ever did together anymore, except take care of their son, Mark.
The boy watched them from the den, where he'd taken to eating alone as he watched TV, a tray attached to the armrests of his black Quickie...
Mike Radley is from Catterick Village and has an ugly nose and a fat gut. Sheila Webb, from Catterick Garrison, isn't very attractive either. They have a date tonight because their internet dating service matched them.
Mike Radley has a pint of lager in his hand and foam on his top lip that he hasn't bothered to wipe off. Sheila Webb notices but doesn't say anything: Sheila Webb is too busy poking the black plastic drinking straw in and out of her alcopop bottle.
Mike Radley's dating profile says that his ideal first date would be a romantic walk, perhaps...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
It was raining, her hair was plastered to her face in a black sheen as she raised her arm to cover her head, even though she was already soaked through. The once beautiful crimson dress made of expensive silk now hung in tatters. Black kohl and the remains of red blush slide down her cheek, collecting in the dimples of each side of her face. The jade hairpin holding up an elaborate hairstyle had long since fallen out, leaving her long wave of black hair spilling...
The noises that, at first, filled every pocket of air, immediately and harmoniously silenced. The overcast sky of smog and gas cracked open like chick which has been waiting weeks to hatch, the yellow feathers shined through. And all was quiet. The men did not speak, they dropped their arms, but their guns' falls were muted by this minute of peace. Even the men dared not to speak. Enemies were no longer so, there was no definition between men, just as there are no barriers between the birds which were the first to make a sound. A song which awoke...
She'd have preferred the electric chair. She'd have preferred anything really, hanging, lethal injection, even one of those weird medieval punishments like hang, draw and quartering. Anything to get her out of this tedium.
The irony was that she'd chosen this. Chosen to run, the alternative being prison or worse. But wasn't she already in prison? Stuck in this dark, damp room, determined to live out the rest of her days without ever seeing the sun. Actually, it was probably worse than prison. At least in prison there were other prisoners to talk to. Here the only human contact she...
He ran into the room, his heart pounding, and his clothes soaking wet.
"The Internet. It's gone!"
"You mean the link's dead? Bloody broadband…"
"No, it's gone. 404s everywhere," the bearer of bad tidings paused to pant some relief into his lungs, "there's nothing left. All the World's knowledge is…"
"… gone."
They looked at each other.
"Hell, what are we going to do this afternoon?"
"I don't know. Work? Maybe?"
They sniggered.
13 days later, when Society had collapsed, one was eating the other, barely able to remember what a 404 was. He was surprised they'd lasted that long....