I sat on the bench in the park. Breathed in the air. Smelled the ash and dust.
It was quiet here, beneath the shade of the building, and it wasn't something so surprising. The city was empty. I was alone.
They say that death sends you somewhere either utterly amazing or utterly horrible. I can say that death brings you to neither. I died a while ago, though time seems to freeze here. I wondered where I was, for a while, and where everyone else was. But this place, this quiet, lonely place, is now my home.
I lean back...
Whap! That's what the thunderbolt felt like. Never felt one before that fateful day. Not sure I can stand another.
I remember the first day I saw her, the woman of my dreams. I didn’t know she was the woman of my dreams at first, that came the moment I saw her smile.
A colleague and I were talking one day and her name came up. He said if you ever see her smile, you’ll never forget it. He was right. One day, not long after, I happened to make her smile and that was it. That was the day the...
"Josh, I'm leaving." She felt the tears burning behind her eyes as she spoke. A look of hurt, confusion, and concern began to etch lines into his forehead as he stood.
"What do you mean, you're leaving? Where are you going? Why?"
"You know why I'm leaving. I can't just stand by and watch everything from my old life die away while they try to rebel against the things your family are doing to them! I can't be here while my life is with them." The confusion and hurt vanished from Josh's face, but the concern remained, softening his grey...
The Moon would never be the same again.
Sure, nothing important in its construction had changed. It was still the same old mass of rock hanging on an ever-decaying orbit around the larger mass of rock that we call home. But it was different.
Maybe the giant structure unfolding on its surface had something to do with it.
This mission had taken years to even green-light, never mind anything else. But now, we were here. Standing on the moon, with a base. It wasn't anything special, though. We were heading to Mars with a similar base the next week.
But...
Drudgery of the everyday. There's really nothing else to explain it. Banality of sadism. John, standing at the dump, Alka Seltzer pill wrapped in a piece of bologna for the birds. Has he ever thought what a bird might feel while its innards explode? That's not really the point. He wants to know if it can work. If he can leave a wake of destruction with nothing but everyday objects.
He watches the bird gulp down the bologna and retake flight. He sees it hesitate, and pop, it falls from the air, guts hanging out of its mouth.
Adam, working...
He sat in the corner with that look on his face, that look that said, I am about to speak.
"Let's get up and go."
I felt so sick, my joints ached, my mouth felt like it had been dry since the moment I was born. I got up anyway. There was no point resisting.
"We've gotta hustle." He said preemptively thwarting the gleam of protest he already suspected.
"But I'm so tired, baby." I said, hoping in vain that he would go for me.
We got off the cold floor without another word. I threw up on the way...
The movies always told me that it's the girl who usually hurts. It's the girl who usually waits, and the girl who usually feels lost in love.
My life isn't a movie.
I'm here in the forest, like Bella waiting for Edward, staring at the clock she gave me, counting down the days, the hours, even the minutes. Like a teenage girl pining over a college boy, I want nothing more right now than her in my arms, curled up on the grass beside me.
She can be thousands of miles away. She can be attending classes and working her...
Leaving was the easiest decision to make, and the hardest action to take. He fingered the photograph of his wife and daughter, remembering the last time he'd held them in his arms, crying as the rain washed away his tears. He remembered the wailing sirens, the questions, the looks on people's faces - faces filled with a mixture of sadness, suspicion, and contempt.
He thought about the judge, the look on condemnation as he sentenced him, as though the loss of his family wasn't punishment enough. He visualized walking past the liquor store, his steps heavier as he forced himself...
He exited the train at Buenos Aires. That was as far as his ticket would take him. He wandered around the city for a while afterwards. It wasn't much, so he boarded a flight to London. The flight stewardess was pretty, but not overly so. Her hair was perfectly tied up in a bun and her lips were pink, straight out of a Barbie Doll. He smiled at her. She smiled back. That was as much as he would allow himself.
When he got off in London, he walked to where his house had been. He stared for a while...
Gradually, that was how the world where it was okay to be a geek, a fangirl, a dork, herself, came into being.
It started with an acquaintance who knew the animated series who became a best friend.
It grew with a sister who accepted everything and opened her eyes to new worlds.
But it finally became real to her when she met him, the boy who pushed her fringe out of her eyes and led her onto the dance floor when she was sad. Who had moved closer in the fog and who had taken her hand without asking. The...