I lost my grip on te wheel. The snow on my windshield was blinding. The ice beneath my tires made my car skid into the guardrail in a sort of slow motion. I could see the front of my car hitting the railing and the hood folding back up toward me. The lights shattered and white and yellow fragments came flying up toward my windshield. The airbags inflated, slow motion, hitting my face, making my head turn sideways. My iPhone flew out of my hand and hit the passenger side window, then slammed to the floor. My dog, Erin, screeched...
He didn't think he was much of a cat person until he met Matilda. She's even worse at this cat-human hybrid lifestyle than I am, he thought. He laughed derisively. I've got to do something about my derisive laugh, he thought. And maybe start talking aloud.
Matilda was trying to scratch a sofa, and failing miserably. "She's got no claws, that's her problem," he said aloud. Matilda turned and glared. "Oops, I should not have said that aloud," he said aloud.
"Oink," said Matilda.
"No, no, it's meow. Cats say meow. Pigs say oink. We are not pigs." I had...
My best friend is a guy called Peter and he's incredible at talking to people. He has a vault of information in his head that he's gotten from all of his past conversations with people. When he meets someone new he merely tells them what he knows so far about their hometown and then lets them build upon it, this he'll take to the next person he meets from there and so on. I was with him the other day and we were talking to a guy from south africa, we live in australia, and the guy was used to...
"Come on, Ben," I pleaded. "Why do you have to do this every time we try to have some family time? You know we hardly ever see each other. It's the holidays, for God's sake."
"There are better ways to celebrate than eating defenseless animals that were cruelly raised and slaughtered on assembly lines," he said firmly.
I snapped. "Oh yeah, Ben, well tell me, just why is it wrong to kill animals? They're not humans, they can't reason like we do. A lot of them are predators too. We need to eat. Why not eat them?"
"Because animals have...
We were to meet in the gallery. The glass one, stone fronted with tiles. It is an old place, no longer fashionable. It looks out onto a street where buses no longer run and rubble fills the roads. He said he had a message to give me. The way it was said, it did not imply that the message was from him, but only that he was a messenger, of the most unwilling kind. What inconvenience it must cause you, I might have argued, to have to meet up with me in such way. What a task your people as...
I thought she was made of china, the first time I met her. Girls that perfect didn't exist, only dolls. Frozen icons of perfection, unattainable.
She made me feel clumsy - she was slight, small, pale, hiding behind perfect ringlets. On paper we sound the same - the same could be said of me (apart from the ringlets; my hair is straight, limp) but she wore it with pride, I treated my height as a disability, my weight as an inconvienience, my skintone a health hazard. I looked sickly, she looked ethereal.
Somehow it wasn't a surprise when she spoke...
The dapper man picked up a penny. He inspected it, rolling it over, back and forth in the palm of his hand. satisfied, he pocketed it and kept walking down the street, a whistle blowing through his thin lips.
He stopped at a newspaper stand and debated over the local or the national paper. He glanced from side to side down the street and asked the man working there if he had anything more adult.
The clerk gave him a knowing nod and reached under the counter. The dapper man pulled at the neck of his suddenly tight shirt. He...
The waves rolled in, and I could hear them crashing along the shoreline. It was a fresh water lake, with rocks that made up the shore.
My eyes were still closed as I lay on the day bed. I was relegated to the front porch, as it "was not appropriate to sleep in the same bedroom."
Such old fashioned thinking makes me giggle. Yet, I follow to impress.
I can feel the sun on my cheek and I don't open my eyes. My legs stretch themselves out, s I was slightly cramped on a space too small to fit my...
Okay, I needed to think. If I went left I would definetly be caught. If I went right, I would also be caught. But if I went straight ahead... I would be an open target. I had no other choice. I looked to the left and to the right, readied myself, and took off. I sprinted as fast as I could acrossc the open field and up the hill to where the man was standing, waiting to collect my information. As I ran, I could hear shouts from behind me but, since the snipers could not recognize me, I was...
"Ohh..." The word escaped my lips as a awe-struck sigh. The island was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my entire life. Bulky, mountain-like rocks dotted with dark green trees, surrounded by white sand, and water the color of the clearest, bluest sapphire imaginable. As we flew nearer to it the air became sweet and clear and filled my lungs. The breeze rustled my short brown hair. I tucked myself into a ball and executed a perfect mid-air summer-salt. I watched as the water came closer and closer. This place, I could tell, was magic.