Stepping slowly off the train, my eyes adjusted to the black blanket that cast itself over the old town in nowhere France, about three miles from the border of Belgium. Having no clue where I was, I tried to recount the previous events by fitting each individual awkward happening side by side, hoping their grooved edges matched so as the picture might unfold as a panorama landscape in my mind. Then, and only then, I might be able to tell myself why I had woken up in the black night, on a train in a foreign country that speaks a...
It was my "life's work," that's what they call such a thing, but it makes it sound so organised, like my life was something i contolled and I sensibly chose each morning to get up and expend my earthly energies on this tower. "You must have a lot of self-discipline" people say to me when I meet them at parties and we discuss our lives as though we see them clearly, as patterns of behaviour about which we can make broad statements. I try to answer, as best I can, saying something appropriately self-effacing.
What I'd like to tell them...
She heard their labored breathing coming closer now. She huddled closer into the doorway, willing herself to be blend into the red painted facade of the building. She shut her eyes, a childish hold-over, believing that if she couldn't seem them, they couldn't see her. Of course she knew that wasn't true, but maybe if she closed her eyes, tight enough, she could mute the pounding of her heart; a sound so loud she was convinced her pursuers could hear it echoing in the damp and empty alley way.
"BANG!" She nearly screamed out, at the sudden and intrusive sound....
This girl was smokin' hot and carried an umbrella that matched her gown. She was on her way to a sumo wrestling match between her husband, Xiao and his enemy, Chan. She was worried for her significant other, for he has been training for this match for his entire life -- this was his one moment to prove himself in the ring. For weeks, she watched Xiao drink eggs for breakfast and squats before bed. That said, she was confident that he would prove himself. She was confident that his training was enough to overtake his enemy.
She finally reached...
- Ok, I'm going. Don't be late again!
Her voice pierced the steamy hot bathroom as I lay, half submerged, pondering the taps.
I don't reply.
Every morning it's the same. I sit here, enveloped in warm water and steam, my mind completely blank. But always, she invades my mind.
I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for her. I would lay here, topping up the bath with hot water as it grows tepid. Just blank.
Occassionally I think back to my childhood. As the hot water swirls in through the warm I am reminded of something my Mother always...
They gathered in the woods. All of them. Not one, two, three, but all of them. I have defeeted them all at one time or another, they're not that tough. But all at once? No way. It would be impossible. Somehow, I am also in the woods. I beklive I know what happedn to get me here. I blame the pink slime from mcDonalds. I think I ate one too many Big Macs because the pink slime took over my brain and forced me to this field, this palce I have neevr been. As I stood and watched my death...
I was staring. I could feel myself doing to but I couldn't stop. I was transfixed.
We had met only three days ago and already I just knew that she had made an impression. Although until this moment, I had no idea just how much.
Her skin was flawless marble. Her frame slender and perfectly proportioned. Her hair long, thick and silky.
She was perfect.
Even now, as took off her clothes and showed me her secret.
The giant red scar cutting into her side.
She wasn't ready to tell me where it had come from, but I was okay...
"Wow, that was a fun."
"Yeah, it was."
Water dripped on the floor as they ran through the house and out onto the deck watching the lightning. It scared her at first but then it was like she had never seen anything so beautiful and menacing. Except perhaps her 8th grade Science teacher, Mr. Hanson. He was an odd man, with a thick black unibrow and wrinkles that resembled an old cartographer's first attempt at the East Coast of South America. He had a sinister laugh, not unlike the thunder shaking the ground under her feet.
She remembers thinking he...
'Just a little more." She said wearily, but the fierce look of determination on her face kept Malcom from insisting further. Her hands gripped the support rail so tightly that her knuckles drained of all colour.
'Alright, alright, if you really think you can do it.' He said softly, taking a step away from the wheelchair at the ready to wheel her away back to her room. He had to admit it, he admired her persistence, even if it was against his better judgment.
Her first step on her healing leg was shaky and the beads of sweat on her...
In hindsight, the solution was obvious. But then solutions always are when viewed backwards, from the end of the equation. It would be like saying I really oughtn't to have had that extra slice of cake, in hindsight I know that. But at the time, in the moment, faced with that cake all covered in icing and topped with cherries and accompanied with cream, the thick and runny kind, not having it wasn't an option. And then there was peer pressure and all of that complex mess to wade through. It had been the same at school, when she had...