I wish I knew how to live, live a life that were free of rules.
But to enter the world and be certified is that of a thousand fools.
Fools that came before you, fools that will come after you,
throwing their ideals on the world, categorising lives, categorising deaths.
Simply to feel the wind in my face brings me back to reality.
The cool, uncontrollable breeze flowing like a river freely through the air.
No one to tell it where to go, no one to tell it what to do.
That is pure living. That is freedom.
I still washed his shirt. There was only his plaid shirt, because it was what he'd worn. But I still washed it. My son disappeared a few years ago. They found his body by the lake. He was wearing that old plaid shirt. The rest of his clothes I gave to my nephew, about his size. But that plaid short...I'd never give that to anyone. It was his, it was all I had left. The plaid shirt. His room was in perfect condition, but it didn't seem right. But his shirt in my soft-from-washing-so-many-dishes hands. It felt like everything was...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. It was snowing, freezing her slowly. She continued shivering rubbing her arms to try and get warm. She started losing feeling, first her feet, moving up slowly. She panicked, she tried to move but she was stuck. It felt like something was holding her in place. The world started to go fuzzy, everything slowly losing colour, fading away. She saw a silhouette of a person, walking past, they turned their head and started running into the alleyway, saying something that she could not hear. The young...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
"Oh, looks like we have ourselves a volunteer?" the D.J at the booth smiled at her.
She blushed when the spotlight hit her. Figures the first time she wanted to be daring, the whole world would see her.
Looking back at her friends as though she wasn't sure of herself anymore, they all encouraged her, their hands moving towards the stage. "Go on!" her friend, Darnell grinned wildly to her. The rest of their group nodded their approval.
Well, if Darnell...
Fate always gets the last laugh.
You expect one thing, another happens. You predict a storm, there's not a cloud in the sky. You bet on red, the ball lands on black.
Or worse, double-zero. Salt in the wound.
I hated it. Predictions, prognostications, fortunes even, for those inclined to call it that... they're supposed to be real. I always believed in that little bit of the supernatural, some little psionic impulse, letting you see fate, visualize fate, and perhaps even manipulate fate.
Only I could never get it right. Nothing ever rang true, even when I deliberately predicted the...
It came at me. At a speed of lightning. I couldn't think. Speak, or even hear correctly.
The crowbar was flung directly at the side of my head. It nearly missed my face and I could hear the buzzing of crowbar go through the air. Joe ran for me and the crowbar as I sprinted for a safe place.
Joe and his gang were following behind me. There;s now
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She was tired - her mother had been taking her from door to door all morning looking for ... what exactly? She wasn't sure, but she knew more than her mother thought she did. She watched the kids play who weren't her.
She was the product of two Peace Corps volunteers, and this adventure teaching English in China was the next step. AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, MercyCorps, and now the less valiantly named R4 English Tutoring. She should have been starting second grade this year, but she...
We speared our forks on the tablecloth stained with soy and spice and duck sauce as the waiters took the picked-over "Chinese" dinners from our sight. The restaurant catered to American tour groups whose beef and corn tastes fall too unrefined for authentic foreign dishes and who long to travel thousands of miles just to conjure a memory from the hole in the wall Taiwan Garden down the end of Mulberry Street, across from the courthouse.
As our servants sprinkled the remains of our feast in the dumpster like fish food to the swarm of street children eager for their...
The doctor told me the swelling would soon subside. This made me happy. I hate swellings. Especially in my nose. Once my nose swelled up to the size of the moon. Literally. I was upstairs in the attic when my schnoz grew to the size of a lunar satellite. It crushed all of Prince Edward Island and displaced half of the Atlantic Ocean. People in Pakistan died.
Yes, having a nose the size of the moon is not good. For that matter, having a foot that is the size of a football stadium is also not good. That is what...
No, the blood stains in the carpet don't come out. Yes, I tried. Yes, I did my best. No, there's no lingering smell.
Press conference for killer. Talk shows, radio interviews, Good Morning America 3-minute-segments before commercial break. They don't throw hard question at you. They give you chance to explain yourself. They don't press further.
Smiles, genial smiles and well-trained laughs at cued moments. We get along in front of audience. He laugh at joke about face victim made before death. Well there you have it, he say to camera. Inside the mind of a true killer, he say....