Tears formed in Hazel Grace's eyes as Augustus lifted her chin and asked, "Okay?"
Hazel managed to get a sound out of her quivering voice and shakily said, "Okay."
(Prompt is 'the conversation lasted two words')
Most times we just picked on the same couple of boys. they were easy to spot and easy to make do whatever we wanted them to do. I suppose that we never thought about the fact that we weren't proving how strong we were by picking the weak ones. I suppose we never thought about much at all.
But that day I decided that I wanted to pick on someone bigger than me. Someone who seemed a lot like me, and them. When I found him he was alone but in just a few minutes we were surrounded by kids...
Every day, the old man walked his old dog in the park. A chain fence separated the park from the road. Also, every day, a squirrel would come down out of a nearby tree, and run along the top of the fence. He came for the dog. Chattering, squeaking, he ran back and forth, incensing the dog. This drove the old mutt absolutely batshit. They had a conversation:
chatter chatter chatter
ROO ROO ROO
chatter chatter
ROO ROO
every day it was like this. The squirrel was doing it to torture the dog, you see. As the years went on,...
The Moon would never be the same again. Not after the things I saw, the things I knew that were hiding there. I could never again look up at night without a shudder, without averting my eyes from the horror of it.
The Moon's sickly light, reflected sunlight turned mocking and wrong, crept in through my shuttered windows. I had taken to taping them up, afraid to go out at night, afraid of what might be there.
They walked down on moonbeams, those horrible things with too many angles, walked down and fed. I remember the first time I saw...
I had done this so many times before. I had done this so often that it simply felt mechanical now. Everytime, we would walk up to each other say hello, and sit down in our desks. And ever day I felt powerless to do anything about the ache in my heart. But I did know what was causing the ache. It was caused by the fact that, although we were so close to one another every single day and although we spoke every single day, it never went any further. I wanted him to hold me and to tell me...
She normally didn't speak up. She was the quiet, reserved type. The type who'd sit at the bar with her friends, and just silently listen to the conversation around her.
It was Julie that got her frustrated, though. Not just frustrated, angry. Julie was talking about the camp she'd sent her son to, one of those camps that promotes a more 'traditional' lifestyle. They advertised it as being 'moral' and 'healthy'.
The young woman had no children of her own, she was far too young for that. She worried that she was wrong for telling somebody else to raise their...
Centuries collide and we find Marie Antoinette, victim of the Today Show questions. Cue Katie Couric:
"Marie, why couldn't you give your husband a son?"
"Well, Katie, "
"No Marie! Why?"
"Katie,"
"MARIE."
"Madame Couric"
"WHO is Madame Couric? Call me Katie, now answer the question, better question, though, explain your infamous 'let them eat cake' phrase."
"..cake, hmm, cake...let them eat cake, boy these studio lights are dreadfully hot, my white face is dripping and this foot-tall wig is absolutely scorching my head."
"MS. ANTOINETTE!"
"hmm? Oh yes, let them eat cake..well"
"Get her out of here Matt. Next...
She stood waiting by the binoculars. How sappily romantic was that? She shook her head at her own ridiculousness.
To distract herself, she gazed out across the city. The beautiful city she called home.
From here, everything was so clear and straight. The roads looked easy to navigate, like one could never get lost.
She had moved to this city four years ago. Following a dream, a memory. Some how she had stumbled upon him. And he was, real.
He was also no where to be seen.
She looked down at her wrist for the watch she didn't wear anymore,...
The seven of them gathered around the long dinner table and silently shuffled the serving platters clockwise. Mechanical arms held, then spooned and dropped food, taping the edge lightly against the plate. Then back in the dish and passed the person to their left, and they received from the right.
Pitchers of iced water sat sweating in the middle, surrounded by short glasses, and borders by salt and pepper shakers and piles of napkins.
When all the plates were filled and the serving dishes stopped moving they leaned their heads down and a silent prayer ran from the moving lips....
She could listen all day. The raspy, melancholy vocals of the demo tape was not without flaws, but in this moment, perfectly delectable. Her own voice was breathtaking to her; after all, how often did she experience a conversational sing-a-long with herself? The sound was a breath of fresh air, nothing she inhale here, in the muggy city, at her perfunctory job, or with her otherwise dull life.
This was the sound of butterflies.