"Pull!" Erin directed us. We pulled.
"Argh, it's no use!" Ted lamented. "He's never getting unstuck."
Paul's head and chest might as well have been fastened to the tree by some kind of industrial-strength Krazy glue.
"Dammit," Erin said, winded. Even the three of us, with our combined strength, had no hope of dislodging our companion. "Whose idea was it to bring that stuff to our picnic, anyway?" she demanded, scowling at the wicker basket full of the white adhesive.
No one said anything. In truth, we'd all agreed, even Paul and Erin. We thought we needed it to keep...
The water was clear. "I cannot be stopped, I shall continue."
The stone was implacable. "I am stone, I have been here for millions of years, not some come by night dribble. And I shall not be moved.
But the water was clear, the water would be moved, eventually. Through ten seasons and ten seasons more, the water made it's argument, and every drip, every gush, every freeze, its argument was stronger, and one season, the water continued, and the stone was nothing more than ten thousand grains of sand, each with its own mind, no longer implacable. The stone...
She opened the envelope and screamed. This was what she had been waiting years for, the answer to her quesitons. As sobs racked her body, Casey could tell from her reaction that this was not the news she had been expecting.
"She's not going to talk to you?" Casey whispered, moving closer to comfort her friend, now whimpering face down on the bed.
Angela hiccuped softly," She doesn't want to see me."
Although the search for her mother had been fairly easy, just a few clicks on Facebook, Angela was not prepared for the heartbreak that would come when her...
It's bad enough that I spent 500 bucks on the phone, but now I've waited for months on end to get the latest software upgrade. It's become an obsession of mine; I bang the refresh button on blogs, Twitter, Facebook. I scour the internet and Google news for any shred, a tiny iota of new insight into why a multi-billion dollar corporation can't seem to release a timely software upgrade. To make matters worse, amateur phone enthusiasts have been able to release more in their spare time than the actual "professionals" who, as far as I know, are being paid...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room.
I can't tell if he means me harm or not - he's not doing anything. He's just standing there.
I'm not certain if he knows that I'm here. Maybe he isn't certain if he's here.
I can't quite bring myself to approach him; I know I should do, I'm a scientist at heart, I should be testing my experience, the environment. Verifying what I think I'm seeing, what I'm perceiving.
But I'm also a coward at heart; a self-preservationist, a vulnerable young woman. With a strange man in her bedroom.
I...
"Eff off rain! I want a tan, not for my green shirt to get wet!"
It was the fall that surprised me most.
I guessed the weight and the distance. It is easy really once you think about it, I guess easy for me at least or at least it was easy, once.
I scrapped up the side of my leg and sometimes that takes longer to heal now that I am older, but being alone who cares really.
It is a good story to tell if anyone is listening.
It was the fall that surprised me most. It is never expected I suppose. One thinks that you will always be quick, cute, desirable. Always...
The results were in. The young men standing before the judges fidgeted anxiously in their military-style uniforms. James Cox, the eldest and team captain of Squad A, licked his lips nervously as he glanced over at his group's only rivals, Squad Z. They'd eliminated the twenty-four others between them through a mixture of deceit, strategy, and main strength.
"Team Captains Cox and Denmark, step forward," Vice-General Mark Harrelson said curtly. Instantly the two young men, both sixteen, moved the single step forward. "Team Z is this year's winner," Harrelson said in a flat voice.
James had an instant of remorse...
"I feel boxed in," she said.
"I'm sorry?" he replied, not quite understanding.
"Well, the basic thing is this: the image is quite boring, and the color scheme is obnoxious, a weird, misguided attempt at the painterly surrealism that Richard Linklater's Waking Life first presented in film. Add to that two gigantic butterflies, and the whole thing just falls apart. But despite the silliness of the painting, however, there's really no room for absurdity. Characters can't wave pistols around or smoke cigars or get hit in the forehead with boards. I'm boxed in. I have nowhere to go. It's too...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. Two potted cucumbers stood to the left of the doorway, vines climbing twined round trellises up the stucco, the few cucumbers skinny in the middle from lack of rain, though it rained now in gusts and sputters, droplets momentarily darkening her gown.
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. There was scant shade from the clear noonday sun in the inset door. Two cats lay lazily in the sun. She idly stroked one, the calico, under the chin.
Once,...