Jane lay on the couch coughing. She hated being sick.
"Someday," she thought to herself, "I will be immortal, and I will never be sick again." But that day would not arrive for a very, very long time. Not with Safura around.
Safura. Jane's blood boiled in anger at the thought of her nemesis. Her anger made her cough again.
It was Safura who had taken Jane's medicine, Safura who had plunged Jane into this twilight of never-ending sickness. Jane had been so close - SO CLOSE! - to gaining immortality in the weeks before her diagnosis.
She took a...
The children were not at school. They were in the phone booth. Both of them - Kit and Lemuel. They just couldn't keep out of that phone booth, located on the corner of Samuel and Lane Street. Lord knew why. Maybe it was because of the peanuts.
Kit was 8 and Lem was 7 and they were both s'posed to be at Lincoln Elementary. But that phone booth called to them.
"Who should we call today?" asked Kit.
"Let's choose a name out of the phone booth at random," says Lem.
So they open up the white pages and Lem...
With tears running down my cheeks, my hand on top of hers she looked up at me and said, "Do you know what we are? We're the friends who became sisters." I smiled at her and laughed a little. I felt like my heart was expanding in that moment and ready to burst with all the joy I felt and I didn't try to stop it. "Sisters." I geuss the old saying is true, then: Friends are family you chose for yourself.
As I look into the sky, the moon rises from its slumber showing its beauty in the night sky. The stars sit close to the moon, closer than before. As the lights in all the houses turn off and the children hop into bed, I see a star. A start like no other. Speeding like lighting towards the moon. I question myself, 'is it a star?'. The 'star' hits the moon spinning it off track. I look down at the wharf, the water surrounding the land has frozen. The tides no longer come crashing in. I stand and stare at...
I am trying to make up words as I tremble in Fear. I can feel the first drop of sweat starting to run down my face. He, even more feared looks at me and says "don't worry". But, but I'm just not sure what that means? I'm not sure if we are going to make it, well at least we are together, and we will be forever no matter what form we are in. He says to go, but I can't leave him. He knows that deep down inside, I really care about him. "I'm staying".....
Mitch sits on the porch steps. He see his daughter near the tire swing. She spins and spins and spins, her tight blonde curls flying around her as the late evening breeze weaves its fingers through her hair. He thinks of how much she looks like an angel. The force of her delightful twirling sends her tumbling back into the soft grass beneath her. Mitch looks to his wife resting her head on his shoulder as she sleeps and smiles. This is their life and it is good.
Contemptlation of the one. The flame at the center of life. Beginning and end. No beginning, no end.
It's my birfday.
The children huddled around the flame, discussing what was to be done. One suggested that the only possible route was violence, the violence of the oppressed masses against their oppressor. Another suggested that they might take more subtle means of gaining control of the classroom, gain partisans. The teacher came in, and they blew out the candle, acting as though nothing had happened.
Every child around the cake wished that it was his birthday, that he could be the...
Light.
It had been a while since I've seen it. Not the kind of light that you switch on or off when you walk into a room, but the light that switches on when you hit the bottom. The light that you were missing while you were walking blindly around that led you to fall.
I know many times before I could have just switch it on, but I'm stubborn. I couldn't let go of my pride and admit I could not see and that I was wrong.
Arrogant.
But the Lord is patient. He knows me very well, heck,...
It was the same old lie it always was.
"The day after tomorrow, this will all be over."
Of course it would. And tomorrow morning, someone would say it again. And the day after that. And the day after that.
Tomorrow may never come, but the day after tomorrow? Not a chance. Not a glimmer of hope.
The days all ran together anyway, here - there was nothing that set any one day apart from another. The air would be thick with tension, the trench would be cold, somebody would get injured, another would die. It was the same every...
Her name is Octavia Fabrizi and she is 76-years-old. Born in Florence, Italy, she has lived her entire live on the outskirts of the villa where she and her husband have a small business selling baked goods. Every morning before work, Octavia takes up her bicycle and rides for five miles back and forth It is this exercise, and her love of life, that has kept her alive. Or so Octavia believes. Possibly she is right. It is a question that does not bother her overmuch. She's seen too many, older and younger, pass on to the Otherworld and, thus,...