It had been a long day the escape from the crowd into the woods had worn Jessica out completely she was tired. leaving him behind at the alter was the hardest thing she had ever done abut looking at the hand held in hers and his long gait as he traversed the trail easily she knew this was right. The man before her she had always loved she couldn't believe that he had come back for her though he said he would. Years before he had went away to travel the world but the moment he walked into the room...
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...
They crouched to peer beneath the stairs, the grime and dirt on the old hardwood floor unsettling beneath their feet.
"Come on, Benji. Come out." Jorgia slipped her hand into her pocket, grasping a dog treat. She dropped it at her feet in a futile attempt to lure their "lost" puppy out from under the staircase.
Ashley began to pace the hall, scrutinising the mysterious markings etched into the dirty, peeling walls.
"Hurry, Jorgia," she breathed, "We should get out of here soon."
Jorgia inhaled deeply and swiftly slid her small frame underneath the stairs. Engulfed in an atmosphere of...
Vanquished.
That's how Cindy felt as she picked up the books she had dropped in front of her locker. The mean girls had had their say, and she was out.
Cindy supposed she should've known better than to strike up a relationship with Gary, the science room geek, as in the back of her mind she knew she'd wind up in social Siberia. Now even Brady, her football player boyfriend - ex-boyfriend, make that, had knocked the books out of her hands in disgust as he stalked off.
She sighed, knowing her days buzzing around as a queen bee were...
Smile for the camera
He was of an age when he knew he didn't want snatches of reality - no, no, reality was already all around him, he'd had more than enough reality.
He wanted a false joy, the kind of happiness only captured in an instamatic, the image that would was all at once meaningless and meaningful.
In later life he'd write for hours on end about the false smiles that don't reach the eyes, about what those expressions really mean, what's really going on beneath the surface, the realities that can be extracted from the falsehoods.
But -...
The sky blue sea swayed under the ultramarine sky. The sun is an amphibian, I thought. Then I wondered if any creatures lived in the sky and the water, never touching the land, and what would you call that?
A fisherman walked towards me on the boardwalk, handling a bagpipe. A boy followed with his fingers hooked into collapsed crab traps. A wet nylon rope dragged behind, leaving a wiry, drunken trail from where I never bothered to know.
She pulled the book off the shelfe and flip over a few pages. The images were beautiful, the paper such a wonderful quality. She stroked it with her fingertips, feeling the inc on the page. What a book. So old yet in such good shape. The language was unknown to her, some form of chinese maybe. She could fing no price on it. WHat were the odds that she would be able to afford such a gem? She put it back and ambled through the store. Nothing else spoke to her. Finally she went back for the book and brought...
I got beans, greens, potatoes, tomatoes, lamb, ham, hogs, dogs, beans, greens, potatoes, tomatoes, chicken, turkey, rabbit, you name it!!
The results were in, she said. And he ran and ran and ran and ran, disregarding the shouts of teachers behind him, just running and running and running till he reached the office. It was up on the bulletin board, sandwiched between changes in the lunch menu and posters for bake sales. He stopped for a moment, breathless, eager. Slowly he let himself look at it. The names were up. He scanned through them: Joe Malone. Hendrick Smith. Jerry Pandrip. Jonathan Sinker. Hetty Carbuncle.... so many names. He knew most of them: they had been his companions during the test,...
My own pink shoes were the last thing I saw. Then, darkness. I tried to put together the pieces of the puzzle in those final moments but nothing seemed to fit. I was supposed to go to work that morning.
Supposed to. That would haunt me. I was supposed to do a lot of things. I was supposed to pay my rent on time, I was supposed to pick my daughter up from school, I was supposed to meet my husband for dinner that night. It seemed none of that would be happening now.
That morning, after taking the dog...