I lay siege to it. This was war and a fast and furious assault seemed the surest course. There was a front to push forward, barriers to overcome, landmines to be defused. I was young and relentless and eager; I couldn't lose. After every foray I watched the scaffolding rise again, higher and higher and each time I tore it down, waiting for the walls to fall. Eventually I tired of the advance and retreat. New orders came. I couldn't win this battle and there were other wars to fight.
Years later I returned to that once fragile country. A...
As I sat in the grass, surrounded by the darkness, I saw them all around me. Millions.
Their lights twinkling all through the forest, creating a dancing wave of color. The creatures move silently, using their lights as a path to find each other. I sit silently watching in awe, wondering how such a perfect thing could exist in nature. I admire the beauty, and lay against the soft earth. The fireworks of the lights cross against the dark sky. I smile, and let my mind wander along with the lights. I could not ask for a more perfect night,...
"Avery," she said, eyes flashing, "Avery, Avery."
I held the snake in my hands. "I need to take care of it. It's lonely."
"Animals belong in the outdoors, not in kindergarten."
"Then I belong in the outdoors, too!"
"Avery, if you continue this for one moment longer –"
"Don't worry," I whispered, almost to myself. "Flora will get you. Flora will get you."
She came a few minutes later, rage flickering on and off in her pale face. "What's all this?"
Miss Duncan glared. "Your sister brought a snake into a kindergarten classroom."
"What the bloody –"
"Flora!" I yelped....
After my first day on medicine clinic, my head was spinning like a top. I couldn't believe how disorganized the modern American hospital could actually be. If anyone had told me, "dear, when you finally become a doctor, your colleagues will constantly be trying to kill your patients, and you'll have your hands full trying to stop them from practicing medicine," I would have just laughed nervously and moved on.
Yet, here I was.
Nothing could have prepared me for the carnage I was witnessing, and not just in terms of my coworkers being lazy, stupid, and sometimes downright malevolent....
She didn't look at him. She couldn't. He was standing there, and she didn't recognize him. Alex hurt Keri. Beyond hurt. Four years of sleeping together during summer and winter breaks from his Catholic college in Ohio HAD to mean something. Didn't they?
Not to him. Not anymore. He wasn't in it for the same reasons. Maybe he knew Keri loved Zak, too. Maybe Alex knew that deep inside Keri really loved them both (she hoped neither of them knew about each other, at least). Maybe he hoped that Zak would love her back so she wouldn't be so hurt...
I was twelve years old when I first sat behind the wheel. I was very nervous to drive but as I was very much into cars and always wanted to drive, I somehow had that believe in me that I could do it. People usually start learning to drive in open fields or somewhere in free areas with less cars running around, but I started my first drive in quite a busy area and I still could managed to do it. Since then I have started driving and so far luckily I have not met a big accident. I wont...
They pulled up to the old bar, the Far Bar. They had been there numerous times before, but this was to be their last before projecting out of their own bodies and into some others.
"Come on, dad, of course she remembers you. Will you please just mellow out and come inside with me?"
"No way, buddy boy. You go right on in. Fuck her for all I care. Just let me lie in this car. This is where I'll die. Right here...in the volvo."
The son jumped out of the car and fisted his hand in a knot, shaking...
I shot my butler. He was really making me mad. You see, I had told him several times to stop buring mt toast in the morning. He also had a nasty habit or overvooking my eggs. Nothing worse than overcooked eggs. Well, so you see, I had to shoot him. But he didn't die, which kind of made things worse for me. I only grazed his elbow. I knocked some bone chips off and not much else. He didn't even tell anyone it was me! he made up some story about slipping on some water on the floor of the...
I have a reputation.
The type of reputation that, when I walk into a room, people smirk or have that flash in their eyes that clearly says "I know what you did last night".
I have a reputation. I'm not that proud of this reputation, I mean, I wouldn't advise the me of the past to do it all over again. But I did do it. I did take that guy up to my room, and I did agree to go on a drive with that guy, and I did let that guy pick me up from work even though...
Chuntao was an anxious young girl, short and dumpy, who for money spent her mornings delivering leaflets advertising pizza to households in her part of Beijing. (For no money she spent her evenings playing the trombone.) It was a tedious and tiring job, and time would drag. One rainy day she reached the doorway of a house which perched at the top of an enormous stairway. Breathless and sweaty, she tripped on the doorstep and dropped her leaflets. As she bent down to gather them up, the door opened.
"Who are you and what do you want?" asked a man...