*click*
"Sweetie, Daddy is trying to work, OK? One more picture and then you go play with your dolls, OK? You can do a fashion show and take pictures of them. Wouldn't that be fun?"
*click* *click* *click*
"OK, that's enough now. Honey? HEY, HONEY! Can you come get Penny? I need to finish this report! Honey?"
"She can't hear you."
"Why not? Where's Mommy, sweetheart? Is she outside?"
"The woman is in my capture device."
"What? Your... Penny, what's wrong? Why are you looking like that? Where's Mommy?"
"The woman is in my capture device. Along with the pre-reproductive...
When I was a child, we used to have pet mice. The first one was called Snips and I don't remember how or why, but we had it for a few weeks and then it died.
According to Grandpop, who is not the most reliable storyteller...no, that's not quite true. He's a reliable storyteller, he's just not the most reliable truthteller. According to Grandpop, Snips didn't die of any ordinary mouse cause of death.
Snips died because he got in with the wrong type of animal.
Again, I'll stress that this is all according to Grandpop, not something I saw...
'Kenya.'
I looked up from my book. 'Huh?'
'Kenya.'
'Can I what?'
'No, the country. Kenya.'
'Yeah, okay, in Africa. What about it?'
'We found him there. He's working in an aid camp for Somalian refugees.'
'Him? Who?'
'You know who I'm talking about.'
I put the book down, forgetting it. 'How certain are you of this? There can be absolutely no mistake, understand?'
'Positive identification. No question.'
'Anecdotal or visual? We need to be sure.'
'Oh, absolutely visual. A low flying drone picked him up leaving a market. He had a couple of bags of veggies and a rack...
Daring to be noticed for the first time in her life, she pushed her chair back and stood up.
"Ladies? Gentlemen? Entities?" Helen paused. No response.
Helen glanced around. The large workroom -- some schizophrenic combination of retro and avant0-garde -- was loud, clicking and warbling and chatting in a very large number of tongues.
Helen cleared her throat. It should have been for effect, but it was because her throat had suddenly dried, as if she had swallowed the entirety of the Sahara back on Terra. "People! And non-people! Listen!"
To their credit, many did. Many didn't, but that...
The waves crashed and slapped at the stones, slurping up mouthfuls of sand and dragging them back to the deep. Elk stood out on an outcropping, the letter held tight in his hands. He didn't need to read it again, had read it fifteen times already this morning. And besides that, he wasn't an idiot and knew what was happening..could see the signs pointing at the end.
The waves frothed and slapped at the sand and stones.
But a letter was for cowards. Dash a note and sneak out the back window and then move on with your life.
No...
"Who among you, if her son asks her for bread, will instead give him a stone?"
I was paraphrasing, and quoting out of context, but she didn't know that. She was just a foolish, naive, ignorant, innocent young girl. She'd begged and pleaded for the opportunity to raise a pet. The goldfish just hadn't been enough, either. Oh no; she wanted a mammal.
So the baby gorilla came home with me one day, fresh out of acting school. This little guy was GOOD. He could play dead with the best of them. He could even slow his heart rate to...
Nothing about him is gentle or soft. I look at him, standing strong, trying to avoid the lure of muscles twitching under thick white cotton. I want to reach out and touch him, to feel skin on skin, but I can only wait.
Later, we are alone on a hilltop, and he is shirtless in the heat. I try to focus on the distant view, think of anything but the way my heart rate begins to increase. As he moves towards me, he has no idea of the feelings in my head.
Torturous almost.
Wars have spiralled from less passionate...
A bubble of blood oozed around the tip as he held the blade on his thumb. The knife was unbalanced and sharp. There's a metaphor in there somewhere, he thought.
Hi. My name's Steel. Chinese Steel. I'm unbalanced and sharp. And dangerous. And cheap. And I'll probably break the first time you try to use me.
Bad metaphor, he thought. Or too good.
With a flick of his wrist, the blade bounced in the air, spinning awkwardly in a half-arc. It fell, jabbing into the ground in the middle of the circle of empty beer cans. Close enough to the...
It starts out a little top heavy
with a first line so weighted down with its own importance
that it has to sink to the second (or even third) stanza -
the spark of an idea around which the softer lines crowd.
It usually has a trail of water drops leading up to it
because all good ideas strike in the shower
(it's always the shower)
and will be lost in the time it takes to comb or dry or dress.
It's never quite happy in its own skin
but lacks the will to be anything else
It shouts to...
Lola. That was the name of my new girlfriend. The one my friends all warned me not to get involved with. But of course, it was my life and she had been through so much already.
Bi-polar mother, alcoholic father, maladjusted siblings. Not really surprising Lola cut herself, gambled her benefits on the arcade machines and didn't eat much apart from dried Chinese noodles you boil in a cup.
Now that she knew that someone loved her, all this would change. She could pursue her artistic abilities, finish those novels, sleep at nights instead of watching movies and worry about...