Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.
A voice calls out urgently. She rises, summoned.
"Yu-Jing, laundry!" It is harsh and altogether unkind. She glides into the hall, gown flowing behind askance. Her eyes rest on the floor.
She is addressed without being seen. "Have them cleaned. Collect them tomorrow." The girl gathers, bundles, wraps, more delicately than they deserve. The red gown flows behind her over the floor, across the doorway, into the streets. Yu-Jing takes her master's bundle to the laundromat, the red splashing colors into the muddy pools of the...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. In her hand she held her family's pendant. At that moment Chang, her brother, snatched the pendant from her. "What are you doing with this Huang-nuni? You know not to play around with this."
Suddenly, a bright light emanated from the silver pendant, engulfing Chang and Huang-nuni. They were surronded by white. An old man approached and spoke "You have entered another plane of being. Now begone!"
Chang and his sister reaapeared in the doorway to the astonishment of the servants. From that day on, Chang...
Outnumbered three to one. And I think A fourth was creeping up behind me. They fanned out across the mouth of the alley and whispered to each other. They walked forward slowly, and together, I chuckled a bit when I imagined them to be a dancing troupe.
They saw me laugh and slowed their pace, not by much, but just enough to show me I had rattled them.
Cold, black steel appeared in their grimy fingers. One knife, one section of pipe, and the lead man pulled a snub-nosed pistol. A .22, a woman's gun. I wondered how close I...
"You'll never say it, will you?"
"Say..what?"
"What do you think?" She is exasperated, hands on her hips, eyes looking...sore, maybe.
I can never tell.
I should be able to, by now.
"That? Those words?"
She makes a face, and it's like a bridge collapsing. "Those words. You make it sound like they're...they're... like they're something bad."
I can't even think them, let alone say them. I mean, I do, of course I do, but... No.
"They aren't." I attempt. "And...you already know..."
"Do I?" She's staring now. "I did. I did know, but now...I'm not so certain. I...I just...
Boom!! I heard the the elephant fall on the floor it felt like there was a earthquake. There where people screaming and begging for help. He was injured, injured real bad. You could hear the elephant crying for help while he was aching with pain. So i called the zoo manger who was a vet in his bright red face you could see there was something wrong. He had broken his leg. So i asked "what was it caused by". He said "The elephant dragged his feet".
"Why do people have to lie?" Bridgette asked herself as she looked over the water.
The couple that passed gave her a odd look but she just shrugged, she didn't care what people thought.
"I always tell the truth, even when I probably shouldn't. So, why is it so hard for other people? Why can't they just say what they feel?"
A face of a boy she knew drifted to the forefront of her mind; sure, she already knew he liked her but did he ever tell her? No.
"Things would be so much more simple if people just spoke...
We were playing a family game of tag. I was the seeker acting as if I was a robber making sure no one was hiding from me. I heard a ringing in my ear. It was nothing but silence and the creaking of the wood beneath my feet. I checked every single closet. But I couldn't find anyone. It was like they had left me here alone trying to find them while they were out doing something fun. I decide to check the basement. I walked don't the slanted wood stairs. I heard the whispers of their v
He sighed. It was an all-too-frequent result. Women never noticed him (here he paused to chastise himself for thinking that without providing any statistical evidence, and to suggest to himself that perhaps he had an availability bias), and he was lonely.
Why shouldn't he be able to give and receive love, like every other member of the human race (here, he noted that it was unethical to assume that any individual deserves the respect or love of another without earning it, and that he should avoid thinking of a romantic partner as an object that one acquires)?
It just wasn't...
Scott winced as he saw the woman spread the fingers of her left hand on the table. Of the standard complement of five, she had only her pinky and thumb remaining. The others appeared to have been cleanly sliced off.
"Ouch," he said, taking notes on her chart. "What was your occupation?" he asked politely, trying not to let the sight bother him.
"Data entry clerk," she said in a laconic, bitter tone.
"I, ah, yes, I can see how that would be ..." Scott coughed to disguise his confused verbal fumbling. He wrote some more, primarily as an excuse...
Framed by white-washed plaster walls, she was a sharp contrast to the beige and grey of the street surrounding her. She reached up and brushed a stray lock of black hair from her forehead, looking over her right shoulder down the street. She was waiting, and her eyes scanned the oncoming traffic carefully, searching.
The young man across the street had stopped walking when he noticed her, a sudden burst of brilliant red against the subdued building. She never looked over at him, never stopped looking down the street at the oncoming mass of bicycles, cars, carts, trucks, and people...