Until now she'd never thought of herself as pretty. But now, in the mirror, the morning light slanted in underneath the almost closed blinds, she did.
He lay, still asleep, his hair tussled, blankets twisted around his midsection, one arm under the pillows, another across his eyes.
She walked softly from the mirror, and stood over him. Her thin fingers reached out and caressed his cheek.
He groaned and turned on to his back.
She caught sight of herself in the mirror once more. She felt like Aphrodite, or Helen of Troy. She bent down and pulled something from under...
She shifted slightly, adjusting her spine against the doorframe. People kept screaming at her to get out of the door way. She was too tired. She had been there too long. The people, who were screaming, had no need of the door. They had much need of her. So they screamed. She noticed that her nails were clean and bloody. She thought that she would have to dirty the nails with a towel in order to stem the flow of blood.
"Couldn't have picked a better night for it... or a better doorway."
This was the message that she had...
, he assured the frightened convenience store clerk. The first thing was potato chips. He needed potato chips RIGHT NOW, he told her, or he would literally explode, because there were bombs strapped to him.
Don't worry about the bombs, he said again, trying to calm her down. But get me those potato chips quickly. I want the deep-fried sour cream-and-onion flavored type, he said, speaking slowly and enunciating so that there would be no screw-ups.
He had the advantage. She would be forced to retreat behind the counter, retrieve the bag of succulent potato chips that he knew she...
The lamp wouldn't turn on. Andrew wasn't sure whether the power had gone out, or whether it was just the bulb -- these silly bulbs were always coming from the closet and going into the trashcan -- but he flicked the switch back in the off position and headed for the hallway. Rounding the corner out of the closet, he could see no light under the crack at the base of the door.
"Goddamn," he thought aloud, and thundered down two flights of steps to the basement, where his lighter illuminated the breaker panel. None of the switches were tripped,...
I read the note that proves nothing except by its very existence.
Details.
I caught the thrill in your eye when the first tear fell.
Details.
I could never report you but nine out of ten questions, I answered correctly.
Details.
You're right, I suppose, that you never hit me.
Details.
Broke your pinkie moving a couch, eh? Left because she was a bitch? It always goes the same but it's never, ever your fault?
Details, details, details.
2070, by 2070 i want all the bad things to be gone. i want there to be a cure to all the bad things that affect our world. cancer, gone. war, gone. i think that by 2070 the world should just have figured all of its issues out and be a eutopia. by 2070 i want peace on earth, no more starving children, no more impoverished nations. but it starts with now, this generation. i feel like before now everyone has put issues off to the next generation. But it cant keep happening. by 2070 i want the children of...
As he exited the train, he realized he had forgotten his bag. The Bag. As he rushed back onto the train to grab it, the train began to pull out of the station, and the bag was gone. Someone had gotten off of the train with it. As this realization hit him, he snatched his phone out of his pocket. It was his only hope. As soon as the Woman In Charge answered, he told her his problem. He could hear her quick tapping from her computer keyboard, as she told him, " Get off at the nearest stop. Turn...
There is nothing good about Monday. I feel bad every time I think that, because then I realize, "Well, I could be dead, or in Cleveland, and then my Monday would be much worse." And then I feel bad for making fun of Cleveland in my head, because I actually liked it the one time I went there.
Even though I don't do much here, it's hard to escape the native smugness that comes with being from New York City. It is all going on here. The thing is, I don't want to do most of it. I'm pretty internal,...
"You know what 'fuck' means?" said Dean, almost skipping. Behind porthole glasses, David couldn't avoid looking bewildered.
"Um-"
"It means you put your penis," gesture, "in a girls vagina," gesture, gesture. "And you go uh uh uh uh!" More gestures. David felt awkward, but had to laugh a little bit. Maybe middle school in England was different than it was in America, he wondered.
Dean cheerfully stepped along, singing the word "fuck" in just about every melodic interval he could think of. Maybe this was normal, David thought, and his conservative Christian upbringing hadn't prepared him for what life was...
In the beginning, he tasted like rainwater: salty. Dried sweat around the rim of his mouth, a taste that clung to his mustache bristles like saltwater taffy.
In the beginning, he was rainwater, and I was a pool. Splashes hit the bottom. He said, you are a the ruin of mankind, rising to the tops of the trees. He said, you make me greedy to reach your destination like a home.
In the end, he tasted like a mountain top. Stretching high above the clouds to breathe a privileged cold. And I was a seed that could not grown on...