The dapper man picked up a penny. Having stopped, he was hit by an unsuspecting driver who failed to see him get skewered by the starting handle from the high cab of the grocer's van. At first I smiled for having placed the coin, specially bought at auction 68 years from now. And then… absolutely nothing happened.
When SciFi authors tell you of the Grandfather Paradox, don't believe a bloody word. I'd spent a fortune, and most of my adult life pushing the boundaries of Quantum Symmetry, SuperStrings and a host of other areas of Science and Technology. All for...
"I'm with Stupid"
The T-Shirt slogan on the Soul in front of me seemed peculiarly poignant. Stupid he most certainly was, having been 'gathered' with what the lesser demons called the "Camelot curse" - trading their immortal spirits for a lottery win, which regularly brought in hundreds for as little as £10 a life - rarely did they actually define exactly how much they wanted to win. It was all about the rules, really. HIM upstairs… you know… insisted.
The obligatory 'get out' clause, the battle of wits, wasn't required by HIM, but NICK said there wasn't any fun without...
"Tell me what you did. Tell me what you did yesterday."
She was at the bottom of the stairs in her own house. She was alone, but she knew she wasn't. The lights were off and it was dark.
"I was home. There was nobody there, except him."
She put her foot on the first step, and slowly pulled herself up. When she reached the second floor, she put her hand on the railing to steady herself.
"I felt like I was going to pass out. It was because of him."
She walked into her bedroom, looking nonchalant though there...
My sister signed me up for yoga the day before yesterday. And all I could think about were the yoga girl's toenails. She was the participant in front of me, on a pink mat patterned with yellow flowers. Sitting in the most uncomfortable position of my life, it was her toenails that bothered me. Sitting 10 inches in front of my face, yellowed and cracked, with an attempted cover up of aquamarine polish. "Excuse me, " I wanted to say, "That toenail polish does nothing for you." Or perhaps, "Excuse me, could you help me get my elbow out of...
Until now, she'd never thought of herself as pretty.
Truth be told, until a year ago, she'd never thought of herself as all. The concept of self was one that she'd been struggling with for the past twelve months, and she was finally starting to get a grip on it.
The first step had been coming up with a name for herself. Her entire life, she'd been referred to as "that lot", or, at best, "the taller group". She'd been part of a team...a slightly taller team than the other teams, true, but a minor difference in height does not...
As per usual, our conversation lasted two words:
"Hey"
"Hi"
And that was it for the rest of the day.
I can't explain it. It's not like we were friends or acquaintances, or even enemies although some might've described our relationship as such. We certainly had a bit of an obsession with one another, but whether it was in a negative or positive way (one can {and will} argue that obsession is never a positive thing) I can't be sure.
But everyday was the same; walk in, greet each other, and stare from the corners of our eyes.
It wasn't...
"You heard me right, friends. The evil that is draining our country of vitality is NOT Wall Street, NOT Washington D.C., NOT the Chinese or video games or foreign oil! No sir!"
I looked out at them, every one of them shocked at hearing this deviation from the party line, hearing my "lunatic heresies", as the bloggers and cable news harpies would no doubt dismiss them.
"NO SIR!" I thundered, rocking them back in their seats. "I tell you that the greatest threat to America and TO THE WORLD is this scourge, this pestilence, this new opiate of the masses:...
The dream had been wonderful, yet it would never be real.The first thing I did was tweet about it; hundreds of retweets showed I'd hit a nerve. Me, Christine, a twitter phenomenon. And all because I shared my dream (nightmare? No. Dream) of an ex-girlfriend becoming infected during the zombie apocalypse. Undead everywhere, and amongst them the bitch, at last, letting me have the final word.
Wish fulfillment with a chain saw, definitely severing our relationship. It had gone to her head. You had to hand it to her. Even with the plague, I still (for a moment) thought about...
Midnight on the roof he had been told, regular as clockwork but this was the third night he had spent in the cold. But as she emerge from the doorway he thought it had been worth it. Even from this distance he could see she was beautiful. He admired the slim form of her body and the glimpse of her legs as the nightgown slid apart. Suddenly there was a flare of light as she lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. Back to work he thought with a sigh as he took aim at her and pulled the trigger.
The rock where my sister died dominated the landscape like a giant defrocked mushroom.
My parents were standing beside me, waiting for my response as I looked up at the seaweed and the striations. I wasn't sure what they wanted me to feel.
"It's cold," I said.
"We were just up on that ledge," said mom. "The tide was coming in, but the sun was setting and we wanted to watch it."
"Thought we'd just wade back to shore afterwards," added dad.
"But I lost my balance and slipped. Pregnancy does that to you sometimes, messes with your inner ear....