"This, class, is an example of a cemetery. Does anyone know what a cemetery was?"
"A cemetery was a place where bodies were buried up until the last century when death was eradicated."
"Yes. That is correct. It is quite sad, isn't it?"
The ice road stretched in an endless arc ahead of them, spiralling and curving amongst the tall pine trees like a child's marble run which had been exquisitely crafted out of snow. The sun was barely able to climb higher than the trees at this time of day, and she felt a shiver as the heater in the old car battled the sub-zero temperatures in mid-January here in the North. Her hands gripped the steering wheel more tightly as she concentrated on getting to the hospital safely, hoping against hope that she would be in time to bid her old...
Highrises and skyscrapers never scared her. Layer upon layer of people and things were a comfort; like extra blankets on top of beds in the winter. The noise of floors reaching to the sky acted as a lullabye.
So when he asked her to move to a place where the highest high was just as high as bird could fly, and the people were all tied to the land, she said yes but thought no. No I can not be alone. No, I need layers of people to protect me. No, I need to be up high, away from the...
You know this comforting feeling of nostalgia? It always catches me up, when I look at old pictures, just like this. A life has been live - somewhere between the moment the picture was taken and this moment, right now.
With a picture you can breastfeed the burning desire to stop time.
They come here every year. They come in droves to see the battlefields where good men gave their lives defending their land from the invading horde. They tromp over our sacred grounds, "ooh!" and "aah" at our homes - those that survived - and snicker at the descendants of those good, defeated soldiers who sound so different than them, yet speak the same language. But, their money is good I guess. And, looking around at the world today, at he end of a Republic turned fallen Empire, I can take some satisfaction that their hubris will soon be as dust...
Raisins are evil. They just don't belong... anywhere really. They're grapes that couldn't make it and have a second chance as rai-sins... that's right. Sins. You read it right. You have to admit that it's pretty strange that sins is right there in raisins. They're evil little wanna bes that wreak havok on all things good and wholesome. Cinnamon buns for instance. What's worse in a cinnamon bun than raisins? Nothing! Raisins are the poops of the fruit world! And they end up in your cinnamon bun like little turds. Little fruit turds that have to be picked around and...
The man wrote to the woman down by the river Yo. He had finished in the fields and his brother was calling from the high hill.
"Young!" he screamed "the soldiers are here!"
The man dropped his pen. The notepaper, pink and full of tiny perforations the man had made in the shape of a lotus flower, flew in the direction of a crane's nest. A young bird who was wading blinked at it. Soon, it began to rain.
The soldiers carried out the brother and left behind the others. A girl ran to the river for the pen as...
In these parts, they could not afford trains. Instead, they strapped the Jews and leftists and gypsies and cripples and social undesirables onto sleds on the back of a Volkswagen and hauled them to the camp, which was really a slapdash cardboard affair. The guards were lazy and disinterested. They really didn't see a point in the whole thing, but they did their jobs nevertheless, smoking cigarettes with the more gregarious prisoners. They resented the prisoners and beat them - After all, they thought, why should I have to waste my life standing around guarding these people that the Reich...
Gavin was gloating. "Enjoy your final moments, Kevin ... maybe use them to wonder how I found you. Good-bye ..."
He dismissively gestured at Paul, his personal bodyguard and hitman. Paul, with an expression of a stone, drew a nine-millimeter out of his coat and pointed it at me.
I had to stop him. "Paul, I can give you two very good reasons not to pull that trigger."
Paul said nothing. But he also did nothing. "First: I know where Kendra is."
That got his attention. He still didn't move, though. "She's in China, which you probably already know, but...
She didn't look at him as she gingerly opened the sketchbook he had laid in front of her. Carefully schooling her face into it's most neutral expression, just in case she didn't like what she saw.
She needn't have worried.
For as she opened the book and began to gaze over the imagery, the concepts, the scribbled annotations that sounded like he had been talking to himself as he wrote them, she became lost in the world he was describing.
She could feel him tense next to her. She understood that, by being shown his work it was like she...