She opened the envelope and screamed.
"I won! I won!" Curt's ears perked up and he looked over to see Miriam jumping up and down, holding a letter in her hand. He shrugged and went back to reading the daily news.
"Curt! Darling! Did you hear? I won!" Miriam continue to shout. Her wrinkled hands clutched the now crumbled letter. The perm her hairdresser had so fastidiously created fell slightly with each jump.
"I heard." Curt sighed. The Red Sox had lost last night and even though he had watched the entire game, he read through the article.
"Don't you...
The visitor asked, "Can you write a story without a prompt?"
"I don't know," said the writer. "I've never tried."
"Really? You mean all those stories you wrote arose from something you'd seen or heard?"
"Or something I'd read. Tasted. Felt. Wondered about."
"And the novels? The poems? That terrible album you wrote and recorded?"
The writer smiled. "Yes, all of them. I need to have something to start from, some germ of a concept that I can build on. It's like the way a jazz musician riffs off a set theme. They start with what they have and make...
When he went to the pet store Mark Anderson thought it was going to be just another day. He was going to pick out the goldfish for his nephew's birthday and head on his way. Boy was he ever wrong.
It started as soon as he walked in, the cashier was giving him a very funny look that Mark couldn't exactly place. The pets were even weirder. They all looked as though they'd been through hell and back, but Mark, startled as he was, kept looking for that goldfish. If only he'd left then.
He got to the aquarium section...
She sat with her feet upon the wall. He looked at her, "You seem nervous." She stayed silent. He took out his camera and took a picture. "You know, you look like Dorothy, with those on." She sighed, "When's the last time you've seen the Wizard of Oz?" He looked down. She's never been the same since her parents died. Her father was a firefighter, but he didn't die of a fire. Neither did her mother. They died of a car. A car with one passenger. One intoxicated passenger. He went up to her and whispered, "I know it hurts."...
They gathered in the woods during each full moon. The full moon was only significant as it lit the way for their new recruits. But who could forget a full moon?
She knew as she moved towards them that they would accept her. Their faces were neither friendly nor aggressive, they simply were. Each face identical to those either side of it, their expressions changing as one.
If she had not known them for a while she may have found them quite terrifying. But as she had met some of them before, she felt among friends. She looked different, despite...
He sat in the truck parked on the gravel drive, his arm hanging out the window, a cigarette dangling from his finger. The radio was on and Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses was blaring.
She watched him from the behind the closed screen door.
He lowered the visor so she wouldn't be able to see his reddened eyes. Def Lepard's Pour Some Sugar On Me came on next, and he tweaked the volume nob. He could tell she was still looking at him.
He finished his cigarette and flicked it out the window. He took a long drink from the...
It would be a long walk. To no where. Ending some where. A where long off. Tulle of mist. Footage of stage. A wide glow of white pixels condensing to green. Corridors of sparkling black. A long walk but he took it.
Marvin lunged towards the stand upon which sat an old, analog phone. He almost made it. Melinda tackled him from behind and they fell, hard, onto the wood floor. The phone kept ringing, its strident cry begging someone to answer. Marvin kicked back at Melinda but she evaded his foot and bit his ankle. Marvin howled and turned back to try and disentangle his leg from her grasp. As soon as he turned, Melinda sprang up from the floor and jumped towards the phone, kicking Marvin in the head as she passed. His head hit the floor with a dull...
It was enjoyable, this feeling. And so unaccustomed! He had come to a place in his life where so little really made him happy anymore. Leaving the store, though, despite the fact that it was a cloudy, cool day, he felt sunny on the inside. He had bought a new shirt, and he was wearing it - he decided to put it on right away, before he had even left the store. It was green - but a certain shade of green that he didn't see very often. It was his favorite color, and it had called out to him....
The city was empty. That was the only remarkable thing about it. Its streets weren't paved with gold, it's shops sold the usual junk, it had poor districts and upper class suburbs.
The interesting thing was, the streets were empty, the shops had no employees and no customers and it's housing housed nothing. No one was there.
Well... there was one person there, there must have been, or how else could I be telling you this right now? Huh? Didn't think of that did you?
oh... right... CCTV... yeah, good point... sorry.