In hindsight, the solution was obvious.
Anyway, that's what I thought when I awoke, face and hands already sweaty, the dark and humid air beginning already to claw at my face.
There was no light. I didn't have one on me. Didn't think I'd need a phone, with no reception. No, that wasn't part of the plan. And I don't smoke.
So, unlike the movies where there is in-scene lighting when the hero is trying to claw his way out of the coffin, it was nothing. It was dark and moist and stiflingly, oppressively silent.
The plan had been easy:...
"Tis a penny," said he, and bent to retrieve the copper coin from the sidewalk. Holding it between gloved finger and thumb, he inspected the date with a squinting eye and dropped it into his vest pocket.
"Aye, twy twirrly twee, a penny's enough fer you an' me," he sang and performed a pirouette for the passerby.
A woman, richly attired and ambling along with an aristocratic gate, stopped to consider the man as he continued to spin in circles. A member of the upper crust, she lacked that innate mechanism, honed by the lower classes, which steered one away...
"You can count me out. There's no way I'm gonna do this." Lewis strode to the door, coat in hand. I rose up from my chair, hand outstretched.
"Wait! I'm sure we can work something out." I cried. Lewis turned his head.
"Look, I don't want to be on your silly venture, and that's final." The brilliant star light shone in through the window, casting deep shadows along Lewis' face.
"Hey! It is not silly. It's an exploration to the deepest part of this world! They say that there's treasure and fortune awaiting for those who discover it."
"So how...
His hand skimmed lightly over the cool metal bumps. His brow furrowed as he struggled to remember the meaning of the pattern, feeling the warmth of his girlfriend pressing close to his left.
"D-down?" he asked softly, biting his lip as his fingers lingered, heating the Braille with his own touch. Braille. Just another sign, along with the sudden paranoia for his safety, that he was no longer the young man he'd been before the accident. Just another sign he was no longer going to be independent, not really.
Just another milestone.
"Yeah," Jessica replied even more quietly, her voice...
We spent the last 36 hours in bed ticking off everything from the list, blindfold food tasting, leather fetish, school girl, french maid, alien, headmaster, Orient Express, aristocrat and gardener, furries, blind date, highwayman, pirate, rock star groupie. traffic cop.
Miriam hoped that would let her off the hook, no more sex for at least a few weeks. She was fed up of always having to be someone else.
Did Steve ever want her from the start or did he always regret commitment and act like he had the choice of dozens of women?
Tall, black hair (natural) even in...
There had been a time when he could have named all the seas on the moon, and pointed them out. That seemed to be in another life. He curled into a ball as tight as he could go and tried to ignore the pain in his leg and the weakness stealing up his body. He tried to ignore the cold seizing his limbs, and instead recited lists of constellations, dragging them from the pits of his memory. He even managed to get a couple of the moon's names. He uncurled one hand and the claw-like fingers groped blindly for his...
"Oh God" He thought, "please don't."
Angela had it. The coolest, most prestigious item in perhaps the history of the world. The object to define the suave and sophisticated young man that he was. The item he had so long fantasized about having.
It was an Asiachi-original leather bound notebook. So sleek, so elegant.
So inevitably doomed.
There it rested, precariously, atop Angela's tiny head as she gracelessly threw out her scrawny arms for balance and smiled radiantly to her imaginary audience.
She was in the backyard of their country home playing circus once again, the two metre length of...
Walking slowly through the bush, the elephant dragged its feet. Today he felt no joy.
The village lay behind him. Here were fields he could trample in revenge. Here were corn cobs he could eat, juicy and succulent. Here were the years growth of food supplies, enough to feed a family for a year. And he could destroy it all. If he chose to.
Today, he chooses not to.
Yesterday was different. Yesterday, he was fierce and proud. Head of the herd, head of the bush, head of the tribe; ah yes, he was the head of it all.
Then...
He left the meeting sagging, a half inflated pool toy sinking in the acrid water. The sun was making him sweat, though he hadn't though that was possible. He's sweat so much during the interview he felt as desiccated as one of those silica packets they put in electronics to keep them dry.
Vanquished. Again. Another job lost because of flop sweat and his perplexing genetic gift of turning bright red under any form of pressure. How had his ancestors managed to carry their seed so far up the line? A bunch of panicky, stammering fools who traded flight or...
And then there is the approach of Autumn and September impatiently tapping at the window, intimidating August, chasing it away. I reach out my hands in an attempt to catch hold of it, but it is already overshadowed by distance, one step removed. Only yesterday it was April and there was the whole of Summer; it was a time of promise and hope. I naively believed that I deserved it, that I would be delivered unblemished months. It was such a bad winter, so very long and cold.
But here I am on the edge of the season, dragging so...