"You had me at 'ox bow lake'." The girl laughed, twirling a strand of silky blonde hair around her finger and leaning towards David, giving him a tantalising glimpse of her cleavage. He swallowed hard, trying to stay calm. This girl...Megan? Mary? Melissa! Anyway, she was a student, one of his students, and he knew her game. There was at least one every year, the girl who attempted to coast through university on looks alone. Invariably she would behave just like this, taking front row seats in every lecture she attended but spending more time trying to make eye contact...
Shit.
Her hat just blew off in the wind. Well, it wasn't so much wind as the fact that she stuck her head out the car window to get a better look at the flashing lights.
The cops probably wouldn't be too happy if they stopped to retrieve it. Another one lost.
It was her Mariner's baseball hat, the one that shielded her from the torrential rain in Singapore; the one that bleached to a dull slate gray from the sun in New Mexico; the one that she wore whenever the Mariners ended up losing. It wasn't so much a...
The winter of 1970 in the Bay Area was not something I ever expected to experience- especially since I was born in 1990. My folks scolded me every night for sneaking into the backyard whenever there was a full moon. It wasn't my fault: grandpa planted the story about the time-well in my head and it sprouted into a maddening obsession.
My hair was now curly instead of wavy and my hands reverted into the pudgy state of toddlerhood. Who was I, in this time, and why was I only a spectator? My new parents talked about the lunar landing...
The audience stared open mouthed at me. I was petrified at when had just come out of my mouth. Then Amy Smythe began to cry. I don`t blame her, I would have cried, too, if my co-star had called me a stuck-up cow on stage. I could feel the Drama Teacher coming forwards to kick me off stage and tell everyone that there had been a mistake, that the show couldn`t go on now that it`s star had obviously had a psychotic episode onstage. Jeez, I was in for it now. My principal was going to call me in tomorrow...
It's night time tonight, but it's not dark. At least the places we go aren't dark. They are darker than the places that you might go in the day, but not as dark as the daylight places are now. We taxi-ed here, but now we're not sure if it's the right place. It feels right, the lighting is right, but there's no door. A man is walking his dog, and the dog is finding places other dogs have peed and peeing on top of them. It could be human pee the dog is covering, too - people with newspaper blankets...
Spinning. Maybe not the most productive way to spend the day. But I couldn't think of anything better.
At least not when I was 6. So those lazy summer days were spent spinning whenever I could. Falling down in the leaves just made it happy bonus time.
Of course, that was well before the incident. I was spinning down what I thought was an empty street. Spinning because I knew that would make the daily trip to the store more fun. Because one of the perks of living that close to school and being friends with the principal was that...
There's somebody standing in the corner of my room.
Honestly, it's quite off-putting. He's just standing there... staring. Always. I tried staring back to try and get him to push off. But it backfired horribly. He smiled at me. Not just any smile, either. He made it the worst smile ever. His face was just the wrong set for a smile.
In fact, everything was wrong about him. His head was oddly shaped, like a rock bashed against a wall. His arms were thin and spindly, threatening to snap off in the gentle breeze of my fan. His chest was...
They had come up this mountain every wensday evening for the last three years, from the creation of there IOGT-lodge. The first one in this country and now there outdoor meetings was to come to an end. The lodge house was soon to be finished and there common soberity had a place to live
Indeed in a hundred years another generation will look at this photo and now the story some even beeing related to the heroic pioners of the movement.
How the small movement for soberity started in New York state now lived on and inspired so many generations...
Absent. That's what mom has been for the past three years since the day the front door slammed shut on her and the four carrier bags of belongings. That's all she took, her makeup and her best pair of shoes. Crocodile skin. Horrid looking things but they seemed to mean more to her than the family.
Kathleen, the youngest still kept an eye on the front path most evenings just in case mom returned. Rest of us knew that very unlikely as her latest boyfriend had been very rich and mom had always been a gold digger.
We lived with...
Shit.
Bob hit the switch again.
I'm not too surprised because he's the biggest klutz I've ever had the misfortune to know. It had to happen the one day I forgot my tethers.
I took a quick look around. No nearby trees to grab. The neighbour's dog was starting to lift. That *was* surprising. That bitch was huge.
The dog, I mean.
I was about 10 fet off the ground now and slowly accelerating. 'Bob, you wanker. Can you hear me?'
He stuck his unshaven face out the window. 'Wot?'
'You hit the switch again, right?'
'Wot switch?' He stuffed...