The old lady was in real trouble now. She did not feel the grey touch of the dark hand as it stroked her wrinkled face, marking her. It would come for her soon, the looming shadow of time, and there was nothing she could do but grow older and weaker. She sat in the back of a black car, and her destination was the foundations of the departed. Accompanying her was her sister, wearing the same black dress. Everything was the colour black today. It was the symbolic colour; the colour of the dark one. The lead weight of a...
It mocks me. Here I stand, paralyzed, unable to push. The button brings me to the lobby, and out the lobby doors... So I cannot push the button. However, clearly I must push it. I can hardly stand in the elevator forever, at most a few days, after all, I would dehydrate and die. So, I must push the button. Yet, I don't. Indecision has clamped my body in irons. "DOWN" it says, and indeed, where I would go after pushing the button is down. I have always been unable to decide, in fact, 'indecision' is a word that one...
Beep, Beep, Beep
It's Monday morning, ignore the cell phone alarm.
Two minutes later the radio comes on.
Commericals, dammit, I need to change the time it comes on every morning to avoid them.
Five minutes later they will play the daily question game.
Shower time. Eat a bowl of cereal.
White Tee, button down, khaki pants, black belt, matching shoes.
Key in the door, no, forgot my name badge.
Lock the door, start my walk to work.
Scan to get in the door, walk up 3 flights of stairs.
Turn on laptop, think about saying Hi to coworker, decide...
They were listetning. I think they might have heard ebery word I was saying. Did I care? Yes, for they were the ones who controlled my mind. It all started when I laid down my head to sleep a few days ago. Not in my bed, but in remote field somewhere in west Texas. What was I doing three, near Odessa but not as far as El Paso? Intersting question, and I;m not even sure I know why. I just drove. Drove for miles and miles. Hours and hours. I was running from soemthing, something I didn't really undertsand. It...
Yumi had been drawn back to the beach. Inside her trembling frame her soul screamed in agony, her weakened legs barely held her up. It had been one year and eight months to the hour since hell rose up and sucked away her reason to live. On that frigid silent morning the black putrid ocean came over them and then forever kept coming. The shrieking banshee cry of the tsunami alarm vibrated through her bones as she ran with baby Akiko in her grasp. The impact of the wave smashed her legs and the baby tumbled from her tender grasp....
"Travel light."
"But take everything with you."
A murmur of confusion ran across the gathered crowd.
"That will only slow us down!" The young man who had been such a cool head through all of their troubles spoke firmly, with an authority far greater than his age would normally have allowed.
"We can't allow them to find anything which they could use against us." The town drunk retaliated. Or at least, that was all he had been, until the shadow began to cross the land and the war drums had begun to beat once more, since then, he had been...
You can count me out. You really think I'm going to use that thing? that dangerous, weapon-like thing? You really think I'm going to lug around four pounds of dead animal flesh? Think again. Don't even get me started on the sphere of death as I like to call it. Have you noticed how it comes toward its victim, hurling itself through space at a hundred and seventy-five miles per hour, no conscious, just aim and fire. It's not for me. I'm not saying I'm a wimp, I'm not saying you're crazy. I'm saying I have no wish to die....
I couldn't sleep with her next to me, he said. She was tossing and turning, not to mention I couldn't stop looking at her. Her blonde hair rolled up onto her head in a knot, my college t-shirt, and her Superman underwear- I just couldn't take my eyes off of her. She was beautiful.
In the morning when I was still looking at her she smiled wide, loving that I was already (well, still), awake. She kissed my forehead and slid closer.
"Dude, what are you doing, you said you didn't love her."
"I can't help it, the way she...
You know how people always use that metaphor of how an iceberg shows a small portion of the story, but the ice travels much deeper underneath? I was quite literally experiencing that right then. Both externally and internally. My chest was burning for air and my body was thrashing up against the coarse underneath of the ice pool. I didn't care that my eyes were stinging or the water in my mouth was gushing down my throat. What may have been a beautiful glistening lake was now a dark trench of terror. I had never known what snow was like...
'It's the largest ship I've ever seen.'
"It's the only ship you've ever seen."
"This is why I don't watch movies with you."
"Oh, look at her, look at her pandering to the camera - "
"She's an actress, it's her job."
'This is the beginning of such an adventure!'
"This is the beginning of such an awful film. Why are we watching this?"
"Because I like this film, and you're my sister, you're meant to at least try to like things that I like."
"Surely, as your sister, I am meant to pull your hair, steal your clothes, make...